Reply All - #89 Worldstar

Episode Date: February 23, 2017

The unlikely rise of Lee O'Denat, the founder of Worldstar Hip Hop. Also, we reopen a cold case. Further Listening Q's interview on Shots Fired Q's interview on The Champs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm PJ Vote. Lee Odenad died of a heart attack last month. He was 43 years old. Everybody called Lee Q. And everybody had an opinion about him, a strong one. The one thing people could agree on is that Lee reshaped a huge part of the internet. Reply All producer Chloe Prasinos has the story.

Stacey Odenad met Q when he was 17. He was this big, burly guy, always laughing. But she says what most people do. didn't get about Q is that he was a people watcher. You know, for such a big guy, he was just really, he could melt into the background, you know, and he enjoyed it. He loved being in the background and just watching, you know, how people relate and little ticks and everything. He just enjoyed it. So, you know, he always would tell me days that you could see what I saw. He always wanted me to see what he saw.

Q was smart and ambitious, but he was trapped. He dropped out of high school and spent a decade working a string of minimum wage jobs. And so he decided that the way out, the secret to the life he wanted, was the internet. In 1999, he buys a porn site. It doesn't work out. So Q tries something else, selling mixtapes online. That's not a hit either. And then he makes a new site.

All about hip-hop. It has interviews, articles, mixtapes, reviews. Q's dream is that it's going to be the definitive hip-hop website. So he names it World Star Hip-hop. It launches in 2005, and it doesn't go anywhere either. There's no traffic, no advertisers, no money. And Q is desperate. This is a clip from an interview he did in 2014. I was broke. I was pointing my son video games to feed the family. This is 2007. And I had World Star 2 years deep. And I'm over there pointing games. I'm crying to myself, trying to find ways to pay rents due. Because money wasn't coming because people were afraid to invest advertising dollars.

The best he can do is to sell these small banner ads to local underground artists. He's been betting on the internet for years, and he has nothing. to show for it. But then, in 2009, everything changes. We got the first look today at what Apple says is the next big thing. Smartphones get video, which means that all of the sudden, anyone can record any mundane thing they see. We're in Hawaii. We just arrived. We're on the like-like highway. And Q, he's like, oh, that's it.

Forget articles, forget reviews, Q wanted people's videos. And they start pouring in. The only rule was that they have to keep your attention. They've got to draw a crowd. Which is how you end up with a video of a guy in a Batman costume breaking up a street fight next to a video of a guy weeping about how good his weed is. Thank God for my reefer, man. This shit good.

Next to a video of a street brawl. where a guy accidentally hits his own girlfriend. Next to a guy proposing to his girlfriend in song. But I'll be standing right beside you, my sweet baby. Next to a guy who's just too high out of Popeyes. We had Popeyes on Broadway, Houston, Texas. That boy tripping, man. Just got to go on World Star, bro.

As World Star got bigger, so did Q. Here he is on the podcast, shots fired. I love him about because it has its attitude. It's not everything so wonderful. It's like World Star. It's not everything wonderful. It's the good, the bad, and the ugly. There's a lot of bad and ugly on World Star.

You know, you go down like a little hole, like a click on one video. And then it shows you like, all right, shit, you click on like a music video. All right, then you click on like one of those rappers fighting another dude. And one of the videos that was in the back of the fight, she has like this video where she just like, you know, in a bikini. You click on a bikini, this whole bikini roll thing. Then there's like two video girls fighting. And it just send you into this endless. this loop of like, you know.

Pleasure. Yeah, I was about to say hedonism, but okay. So it's those fight videos that actually got the most attention on World Star. Some of them become legends, like the one where a bus driver just uppercuts this woman. World Star is a giant, towering over the competition. I talked to one of Q's competitors, Elliot Wilson. Elliot runs Rap Radar, and he remembers what it felt. like to live in Q's shadow.

BET started this award, the website of the year award. It every single year, Q would win. World Star win every year. Like, they literally won like five, six, seven years in a row. And I'm like Susan Lucci and I can't win any year. And even one year, I remember one year was just like, you guys should win, you guys should win, you guys should win like this year. And then he won again. So, you know, hey, he's a winner.

He's a winner. He used to win that a one every time. And what would go through your head when they'd announce like, and the winner is? I would genuinely be mad. Now, I mean, beat I would be disappointed, but I would just be mad in general, like that we never won. But, you know, if you does it purely by numbers, he was out the park with it. So he kind of set the standard of how successful a hip-hop website could be. Huge stars start doing exclusive videos with World Star, like DJ Khalid.

Bless up, this is DJ Callid. DJ Khalid told me that as the site got bigger, advertisers started showing up. Anybody that had something to promote on the internet had to go through World Star. And it doesn't matter if it wasn't music or not. It was like if you were to promote soap, you know, you would go through World Star because that's where everybody was going. So now Q had influence. He could help a rapper blow up by featuring them on World Star.

Trinidad James. Chief Keith. Chief Keith. You could get famous on World Star without a record label backing you. You could be super amateurish and just like weird. It was fine. You just had to be captivating. One of the best examples is this rapper named Lilby, the bass guy. Lilby writes songs like Cash in My Tiny Pants.

pants, or I'm Miley Cyrus. I'm Miley Cyrus. He goes on TV to talk about the curse he placed on a basketball player while wearing a lace dress and earrings. Little B. didn't look or act like anyone's idea of a famous rapper. But he told me that Q got it. You know, he just really supported what I had going. You know, he believed in me. He didn't think I was funny.

Nothing was, you know, he took a little B very seriously. What do you think was the thing that Q figured out that no one else did? I think he got it early, just the magnitude of the Internet. He knew the power of hip-hop and the Internet very early. And that's something that I figured out too. And I think that's why we, you know, got along and we had a mutual respect for each other. What was your Internet strategy? My algorithm?

No, I don't need to. to know your algorithm. I just like at the moment. Look, you're trying to get million-dollar answers, man. Like you, Lilby knew how to work the internet. For instance, at one point, all these rappers were using Myspace to promote their songs. But there was a cap on how many songs you could post. So, Lilby found a workaround. I had 155 Myspace pages.

I controlled all of them, and I had a minimum of five songs each page, but you can put at least 10 songs on there. And then he starts making. making a ton of videos, these homemade, funny, janky videos. Kew liked him and World Star posted them. How quickly did you notice the effect, like that day, the next day, in a month? Like, how quick did it happen? Oh, that day.

Just once you're on World Star, it happens right there. The effect pops right there. You know, it's an instant, instant gratification. It's been a long time coming. I was a part of the World Star Hip Hop family. You know, and I take pride in that. You know, I still am. Like, you know, it's World Star to the end.

Of course, for every funny, bizarre little B video that's on World Star, there's dozens of videos of violence, of people just beating the crap out of each other. One of the most famous videos became known just as Sharkeeshah. It's of two 17-year-old girls. They look really young. They're talking quietly for almost a minute, and then Sharkeesia suddenly yells at her.

She punches her in the jaw. Oh! The girl falls down and Sharkisha keeps hitting her and then kicks her in the face. Sharkisha, no. Don't kick her, Sharkisha. Millions of people watch the video. When Sharkisha punched that girl in the face, they had a camera ready to go. Before she swung, that camera was in position and set up. This is from a panel discussion back in 2014.

These academics and artists debating World Star on Huff Post Live. And then we're seeing young women, there's a sort of celebration of them hurting each other. So in our communities, we are very disturbed by the ways in which black men are killing one another and we should be. But we are sort of snickering off to the side about what seemed to be these kind of harmless fights. Why are you so mad? I'm mad, right? To be angry because little black girls are getting punched in the fucking face. Little black girls are the black boys.

Black people are being hurt. I call me the devil now. Who calls you the devil? Tell me about some of the shit that you've gotten. I mean, they say I'm putting black people back. I'm promoting violence. But these guys have Grand Theft Auto called duty. And there's 10-year-olds playing Grand Theft Auto picking up hookers and watching family guy and gigg-a-git-gig.

And they're claiming me for violence and sex and all this. I'm just laughing at. If I turn the cameras off, turn a World Star's hip-hop side off, this stuff would still occur. In other interviews, Q says, listen, human beings have been fighting each other since the beginning of time. World Star didn't invent this. But the same way Instagram taught people to take artful pictures of their brunch, World Star taught them what to do

when something violent happens. Take out your phone and yell World Star. Perfect example. I was at a protest the other day. Up at Berkeley, you know, this is the one where they set the fires. This is Davey D. He's a hip-hop journalist and historian. And one of the neo-Nazi cats gets knocked out.

And now you have white kids pull out their video and go World Star when he gets knocked out. Now, we could laugh because I think most of us are like, well, that neo-Nazi needed to get knocked the hell out. But what happens when it's the young man that knocks the girl out on the bus or pulls a skirt up or does something demeaning to that and people pulling out their video talking about World Star knowing damn well that that's going to get a play on his channel? I spoke with Jason Part. He's an editor at The Fader. He actually interviewed Q a couple years ago.

I wanted to know what Q would have said his legacy was. And Jason told me that for Q, the most important thing was that he'd never sold out. World Star was his site, his vision. I know he was always looking to evolve and grow, but also in that way, keep ownership over everything he had, you know. But I think it was a success to him, whether it succeeded within the eyes of the larger culture. I don't think so. Oh. Well, like my own personal politics, like, I do love the site, and I think he's important and he's a gatekeeper in that he very much believed in black youth culture and rap and hip hop and documenting all sides of it.

But it's like at some point it became about something bigger that I don't think even he could control. I mean, I remember in our interview when we spoke, he brought up CNN and he brought up MSNBC. He kept saying he wanted to be the news. He wanted to be a part of the global conversation. I mean, it was certainly an ambitious goal. He made, you know, lemonade out of lemons, you know. I mean, he was given very little, but he was able to work with what he had. I talked to a world star employee named Jay who told me that, yes, the company will keep going without Q.

It'll be run by the same small team that's been there for years. None of them saw Q's death coming. He'd been working on big plans for the future. like a TV show for MTV, it premiered a week and a half after he died. DJ Khalid told me Q had worked really hard on the show and thought it would take World Star to the next level. I'd just seen him two days before he passed.

And when I seen him, he was happy. It's just, it hurts to see the man not be here. I was inspired because I'm like, man, this man not only took over the internet, now he's on TV with it. He just opened another door for the culture. You know what I mean? And I just want to let him know, like, we got you, bro. We love you and we got you.

Reply all producer Chloe Prasinos. After the break, we go down the storm drain. Welcome back to the show. So we are here in the studio with Damiano, who just got back from vacation in California. it, Damiano, hello. Hey guys. Welcome back, ma'am. Thank you.

It hasn't been the same without you. I wanted to say it's good to be back, but it's sunny. It's fucked up. I was like, I was like welcoming you back with open arms and you're like, I wish I could say that I enjoy it here. So I don't know what's going on. Neither do I. Yeah, why are we here? We are here because I have a small update about the tortoise.

What is the update? Yeah, how small are we talking? Oh, don't get too excited. Just a couple of interesting things have happened. Well, there's like, it's a binary story in line. The tortoises found or not found. It's not like, I don't know, like there are rumors that the tortoises living a happy life down in Mexico under another name. Flash is a complex character.

L. Flashow. So, okay, wait, wait. So let me give a little bit of context for people, if you haven't heard the story, you don't remember the story. Like five months ago, I went to California to visit a family who had posted an ad on Craigslist about their tortoise named Flash, tortoise they'd had for like 30 plus years. And the reason they'd post the ad is because Flash had escaped. Right.

And then in looking for Flash, they'd found a different tortoise that wasn't Flash. Exactly. Which led to, like, it ended up feeling like maybe there was an epidemic of tortoises just fleeing constantly.

Exactly. Like, we were in this weird position of having somebody else's tortoise while we were, like, looking for our tortoise. It was like an Alanis Morissette song. Wait, there's an Alanis Morissette song about irony. No, that's not what irony is.

The way she describes irony, like, it's like rain on your wedding day. It's like looking for your tortoise and finding another tortoise. It's like a free ride you just didn't take. It's good advice that you just didn't take. Right. Who would have thought? Anyway, we looked everywhere for Flash. Couldn't find him. And so since I was back in California last week, I paid the family visit.

Hey! What's on? How are you, man? How are you? They were still like, so Benny is, Benny is the dad, and Tricia's the mom. Benny is their kid. And so we sat down in the kitchen. So how long?

I'm just trying to like back up to when I last saw you. How long ago was that? It was definitely before he normally starts to hibernate, which is October-ish. And they told me that since then, the mood in the house has gotten a lot more grim. It's been raining a lot. It's been really cold, like unseasonably cold for this area. And I just imagined him because when they hibernate, they burrow a little bit. They sort of like burrow in wherever they're sitting.

And I just imagine the rain just flooding him out and him drowning. Benny their son had a different idea. I thought that he went down the drain, but you guys kept. saying that he wouldn't fit in the gutter. Benny kept trying to get Mike to climb down into the storm drain to like retrieve the tortoise. But there's these huge raccoons that live down there and like pop up from time to time. One of the raccoons came out of the storm drain and killed their chickens. Oh my God.

So they were like chickenless and tortoisesless and all of their pets were gone and potentially dead. The whole thing's like a vicious Disney movie. Mm-hmm. But the other possibility is that he's like miles and miles away. Like if he's been walking since I was there, he could be like in Virginia or something. Okay. So Trisha decides like, okay, at this point, we just, we need to like, we need to come to terms with like the fact that Flash our lifelong pet is like most likely gone forever dead. And so they wanted to do something to get some closure, like bury a box in the backyard or something.

But then they get a text. And the text says, someone has found your tortoise. No. Get out of here. Actual tortoise or just another tortoise that looks like Flash? Someone has found your tortoise and it's your neighbor two doors down. No. They were cleaning out their garage,

they moved away some boxes, and there was Flash. Shut up! Really? Sleeping away. That's the best. That's the best! I told you that he could have survived anything. So did you just, had you knocked on him?

on the door of that neighbor's house? Yeah, so when we were searching, they live at the end of this court, and we were searching, we had talked to her, we had gone through her whole backyard, and we hadn't found him. The thing that I keep thinking about

is like, he, did he, like, walk for miles and then just, like, came back? That does not seem like the Occam's razor solution here. And then just go in the garage. I think there's a, I think you're trying to invent a scenario where there wasn't a tortoise

right under your nose. Well, anyway, so Mike, picked up Flash and carried him very carefully back to their house. And now he's hibernating in their garage. And I got to go meet him. You have to be careful picking him up because you don't want to wake him up. Because then he'll pee.

And if you start him, he'll pee and all his, you know, that's his what he lives on for the next couple months. on this shelf there's like just like a big cardboard box and he pulls it out and opens it up and flashes inside just sleeping I see the scratch on his shell is that it right there yeah he's like there and there what were your impressions of him he's like a little smaller than I thought he was he's like very charming and he's like do you know when

can you describe his charm a little bit for me please He's like, I don't know. He's just like... You're clutching yourself in joy. He's not an intimidating size. He's like a nice size and he's got like a nice sheen to his shell. He's got that one toe gone, which is like... Very cute.

A little bit of character. His little head is sort of like... This little beak is like kind of popped out of his shell just slightly. And he was like, you know, an animal's sleep and they're like moving slightly? Sort of like because they're dreaming about something. And so his legs are sort of like very slowly swimming. back and forth. So that's my update.

I have to say I'm very happy for the family. I'm super excited. My one regret with the way this turned out is that I was so excited to be like,

look, I will go into the sewers with a recorder and a BB gun and I will fight off those raccoons and find that tortoise. That to me

sounds like a great adventure. You should have been a Ninja Turtle. Turns out it wasn't needed. That's great. Welcome home, Flash. Welcome home. Repai-all is hosted by me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. We were produced by Shruthi Piminani, Fia Benin, Chloe Prasinos, and Damiano Marquetti. We're edited by Tim Howard and Jorge Just. Production assistants from Sangita Ryasam. We were mixed by Rick Kwan. Special thanks to Jay Sang, Jeff Weiss, Dr. Treva Lindsay, Stephen Kurtz, and John Carmonica.

The audio of Q on podcast came from the shots fired podcast and from the champs and from Jason Parham's interview with Q a couple years ago. Matt Lieber is Hoodie Weather. You can find more episodes of the show at iTunes.com slash Replyall or wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is Replyall.com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

Do you have beats? If we had beats? Do you have like house beats? Drum and bass. Or trap beats. Do you have some beats? different kinds. This really isn't as funny as I thought it would be. I'm just gonna go. Sorry for wasting your time, sir. Sure.