The Man Behind the Web's Most Controversial Video Site (WorldStarHipHop.com)

http://gawker.com/the-man-behind-the-webs-most-controversial-video-site


We're 35 floors high above midtown Manhattan and Lee O'Denat occupies the seat across from me. His is a physically-commanding presence—a bull of a man—and I begin to think everything I have read about him up until this point is true. The designer shades. The diamond-encrusted chain. The deceptively knowing smile that spreads across his round face from time to time. He knows something that you don't.

And here he is, the Hollis, Queens-raised kid turned internet entrepreneur who built a media empire off shock and awe, the man who understands that maybe, deep down, all people really want is to be entertained, and whether that pleasure comes by watching two kids fight or some girl shake her ass—well, that's your choice, not his. Because it is your choice. Right?

His speech is deliberate and gentle, and not at all what you might expect from a man his size. "I believed in it so much," he says. "And we've grown so organically based on the trueness of the site." O'Denat is talking about WorldStarHipHop, the video site he created in 2005 as a means to provide for his family. He'll later tell me of the time he pawned his son's video games so he could buy food at Wal-mart, struggled to pay rent, but kept at it because he knew he was on to something (he admits WSHH did not turn a profit until 2009). But all of that was almost 10 years ago, and he goes by Q now.

As it stands today, WorldStar has become a household name among a generation of kids raised on Facebook and Lil' Wayne lyrics. The site, though, is not without controversy. Aside from featuring music videos, both regional and mainstream, it regularly posts videos depicting unimaginable violence (the killing of 16-year-old Chicago student Derrion Albert in 2009, for example) and bare-ass nudity. The easy argument: It's all just click bait, and isn't every website doing that these days? But to Q, it's more than that. WorldStar's mission, so he believes, is to provide coverage of communities that larger news organizations like CNN or MSNBC might ignore. It can be ugly at times, but so is reality.