The History of WorldStarHipHop

Image via WorldStar Hip-hop

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.