Image via WorldStar Hip-hop
Many of the profiles about the late WorldStarHipHop founder Lee “Q” O’Denat include two of his most common defenses: That the site features the “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of urban culture, and how it’s the “CNN of the ghetto.”
Whether you truly believe WorldStar is simply Chuck D as a millennial with a cellphone camera is on you. But what’s objectively true is that the website gave the people what they wanted: Notably, music exclusives, viral bits of comedy, violent fight videos, and sex acts. Though it’s past its prime in 2018, WorldStar was more ubiquitous than your favorite blogs during the height of its popularity.
In 2008, cellphone footage was becoming the primary medium, and social media was on its way to becoming the standard way of connecting. WorldStar capitalized on those innovations and dished out viral content at an expeditious rate. The famed videos often featured a victim, but the fact their popularity perhaps says more about society than the site’s creator.
“People want to watch an ugly side of someone then blame us for showing it, but what about the people actually doing it?” Q said in 2014. “Why click on it? It’s like, why watch porno on HBO at midnight? You have the choice to watch what you want. The remote control is in your hand.” With Q’s logic, WorldStarHipHop is only giving us what we want.
Q left behind a complicated legacy. According to some, Worldstar championed urban culture; others questioned whether that image of urban culture was worth selling in the first place, especially if it confirmed black people’s worst stereotypes to some. Either way, he created a cultural phenomenon, and we’ll always remember him for that. From its begins as a G-Unit mixtape seller to one of the internet’s most controversial outlets, this is a brief history of WorldStarHipHop.
Sept 11, 2001: Q Launches NYCFatMixtapes.com
Back in 1999, O’Denat made his first digital venture: a porn site. That folded, but the entrepreneur would catch a second wind by linking up with DJ Whoo Kid, who was known for hosting 50 Cent and G-Unit tapes. O’Denat noticed that selling mixtapes on the internet still wasn’t a thing (yet), so he launched NYCFatMixtapes.com on Sept. 11, 2001.
Aug. 9, 2005: WorldStarHipHop Launches
O’Denat had trouble handling the responsibilities of shipping those $15 mixtapes with his original site. The original WorldStarHipHop, launched a little past G-Unit’s prime, saw him pivot to the subscription model that’s now an industry-wide focus. The new website’s catalog expanded past G-Unit mixtapes and offered them to download for a monthly fee.
2007: Hackers Take Down Site
Q posted a request on GetACoder.com for a website with “EXACTLY THE SAME EVERYTHING FEATURES” as OnSmash. Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, hackers obliterated the website shortly after it took OnSmash.com’s layout. “I felt like quitting, like, ‘Fuck the Internet,’” Q said about the setback. WorldStar would shut down for seven months.
This particular sequence of events marked the starting point of at least two major plotlines for the then-fledgling brand. First, this wouldn’t be the first online attack against WorldStar. Second, WorldStar’s habit of taking content without crediting the source. For example, the comedy duo ItsTheReal noticed many of their sketches uploaded to WorldStar without an attribution—only text that said, “Courtesy of Mahad.”
“I don’t know who Mahad is or what he does, but I do know that he’s not a Rosenthal,” said Jeff Rosenthal, one-half of the fraternal duo. “World Star absolutely violates rules of Internet connectivity.”
Jan. 2008: WorldStar Relaunches in Current Form
With the relaunch, WorldStar moved away from mixtapes and toward its current form as a video aggregator. DatPiff would have the internet mixtape space handled in the coming years.
Jan. 5, 2008: Masked Man Takes Responsibility for Killing Stack Bundles
In WorldStar’s first pivotal video, a figure who went by Trashman took responsibility for killing Dipset Byrdgang’s Stack Bundles. In the clip, Trashman claimed the killing was a hit job, and went into details about how he died. “Shot him. Twice. He died instantly,” he said. WorldStar has since taken down the video.
Stack Bundles was shot and killed outside of his Far Rockaway home on June 11. The case still remains—officially—unsolved.
April 19, 2008: Bill O’Reilly Attacks WorldStar
WorldStar became one of Bill O’Reilly’s many hip-hop adjacent targets. The pundit took issue with a video in which a child threatens to kill former President George W. Bush. The video was removed from YouTube, but stayed on WorldStar. O’Reilly, of course, had a fit, and called for the Secret Service to investigate the child’s parents and Q. The founder wasn’t that hype about the cable news exposure. “I’m like, ‘Whoa I’m just the video guy, why aren’t you going after YouTube’s CEO? That’s where I got it from,’” he told Gawker. “People kept talking about us, telling me we were on Fox News. The media outside of the internet space, when people talk about us, freaks me out.”
April 27, 2008: WorldStar Lands Its First Major Premiere
In 2008, Ace Hood was a few years away from “Bugatti” and DJ Khaled wasn’t quite pop’s most ubiquitous hypeman yet. WorldStar was still fairly early in its upswing, too, but DJ Khaled had enough foresight to offer Ace Hood’s debut single, “Cash Flow,” as an exclusive. “Khaled saw we were growing fast, and we got that first exclusive video,” Q told Gawker in 2014. “And that kinda made people realize we just didn’t have crazy videos, but we premiered music videos, too.” “Cash Flow” would become the first premiere of many.
Nov. 13, 2009: 50 Cent Sues WorldStar for Using His Likeness
50 Cent’s first major strike against WorldStar was in the form of a lawsuit. The Queens native went after the platform for using his image as part of the site’s banner without his permission. This was the start of a five-year court battle.
Aug. 24, 2010: Kat Stacks
Though she’s become somewhat of a “Who?” in 2018, there’s no such thing as a comprehensive history of WorldStar without Kat Stacks. The former stripper’s breakout video featured her airing out Soulja Boy for allegedly being a cokehead who "couldn't get it up." She’d continue dishing out on her sex romps with the likes of Bow Wow and T-Pain. That rumor about Young Money CEO Mack Maine allegedly rooming with Gudda Gudda started because of her.
However, in 2015, Kat Stacks claimed in a Hot 97 interview that she was getting paid by WorldStar to concoct those stories, (Q never responded to these claims). She also dated Q for a while, though the couple split sometime before the interview. Most recently, Stacks was beefing with fellow promiscuous internet star Celina Powell.
Jan. 24, 2011: WorldStar Gets Knocked Offline, 50 Cent Claims Responsibility
WorldStar went from being a G-Unit distributor to being the frontman’s target. In 2011, Q’s site was knocked offline once again: This time, though, WorldStar was popular enough for its disappearance to be the talk of the day, and 50 Cent claimed he was the culprit. “I put Worldstar to bed, you don’t believe try me I will shut your shit down,” he tweeted. Q believed 50’s shots came because he posted known nemesis Rick Ross’ disses against him.
50 Cent didn’t have anything to do with the shutdown, though. A video creator known as IShatOnU filed a copyright complaint with the site’s server—Q claimed he never received it‚—and the server consequently took WorldStar out.
Still, 50 Cent talked his shit; the G-Unit frontman even got a chance to berate Q in an interview with Angie Martinez that took place later that day.
Nov. 8, 2011: Yelling “Worldstar” Becomes a Thing
Almost a year later, a group of teenagers jumped 25-year-old security guard Daniel Endara after he chastised them for spitting on the subway car floor. On the surface, this was fairly average WorldStar material, but a New York feature pointed out that this is one of the first times you heard someone shouting “WorldStar” in the midst of an altercation. “[I]t wasn’t until Daniel Endara’s L‑train stomping that WorldStar went meta,” said the feature. The moment not only symbolized how much of a household name Q’s brand had become, but also the violence it was readily associated with. The WorldStar chant became so popular that two years later, Childish Gambino used it as the basis for and sampled it in Because The Internet's "Worldstar."
2011-12: WorldStar Reaches Peak Popularity
In 2011, web traffic and ranking site Alexa ranked WorldStar as the 278th most visited URL in the States, ahead of CBS and Slate. At one point in 2012, it ranked at 301st place, beating NBA and Gawker.
March 24, 2014: 50 Cent Wins Lawsuit
Three years after verbally abusing Q on radio, 50 Cent came out on top in his lawsuit. The judge grants him summary judgement on his copyright and right of publicity claims.
Aug. 5, 2014: WorldStarHipHop Movie in the Works
Deadline reported that Paramount Insurge had purchased a film pitch inspired by WorldStarHipHop and co-produced by Russell Simmons. It was described as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in tone.” There hasn’t been any news on the project since.
Nov. 2, 2015: Q Says He Turned Down $40 Million Offer
Q told the New York Times that he declined a $40 million offer for a 40 percent stake in WorldStarHipHop. The story also included an unfortunate tidbit: “Turning down the money was a big risk, he said, especially if WorldStar’s popularity has peaked.” It had peaked: the site’s visits had been slipping since 2011.
Jan. 10, 2017: MTV2 Announces WorldStar TV
In 2017, WorldStar finally made a leap into television, essentially creating the black Ridiculousness. Instead of Rob Dyrdek, viewers got All Def Comedy alumnus Chris Powell taking us through the funny clips. Migos, 2 Chainz, Big Sean, and ScHoolboy Q are a few of the featured guests who popped up during the show’s 10-episode run.
Jan. 24, 2017: Lee “Q” O’Denat Dies
O’Denat sadly wouldn’t live to see his brand make its way to television; just over a week before the show’s debut, his body was found unresponsive at a San Diego massage parlor. He was pronounced dead at 5:30 p.m. that day. Two months later, an autopsy report revealed that he died of natural causes from morbid obesity and plaque near his heart. He was 43.