12/28/2023 0 Comments Q world star hip hopOne of the most commonly-cited examples of WorldStar’s influence is a video titled, “Its Something Wrong With This Lil Boy: Freaks Out When He Finds Out His Favorite Rapper “Chief Keef” Gets Out Of Jail.” Uploaded on Jan. “They dictate what’s going on, what’s hot in the culture.” In 2011, when Propane and Rocko were determined to bring Future to the next level, they knew they had to tap Q to make it happen - and happen it did, with the ATLien now sitting near the top of rap’s commercial pyramid. “The streets pay attention to WorldStar,” he explains. There’s a lot of stuff that wouldn’t have happened in the industry if it wasn’t for him.” Propane explains that to get placed in more traditional media outlets, an artist needs to be working with an established PR firm - something to which many aspiring rappers don’t yet have access. “If Q felt a way about something, he really acted on it. “A lot of stuff broke on WorldStar,” Propane says. Propane - a marketing and music consulting guru based in Atlanta who has had a hand in pushing Future, Gucci Mane, Rocko and Jeezy, among others, out to a wider audience - has seen first-hand how Q ran his business, and how wide its reach became within hip-hop. But if Valli paid for his video placement, he’s certainly not throwing money down the drain WorldStar has a long track record of being early on rap’s rising stars. In some contexts, that would be predatory. I treat everybody the same, from Puffy to the nobody with $500 for a video. “I talk to everybody,” he told Vibe in 2011. “The scum of the earth. Q’s guiding philosophy was always uncompromised capitalism. Where RiFF RAFF’s video is subsequently marked “WSHH EXCLUSIVE” (when viewed on YouTube, it will start with the WSHH banner), Valli’s reads “SPONSORED.” Q never claimed to be a journalist, and therefore was free to solicit payment in exchange for posting a music video - something more mainstream outlets were unable to do. Above all, Q’s brainchild is an aggressively populist enterprise, where the only status symbols are clicks, preferably counted in the tens or hundreds of thousands. And in between the memes and fist fight compilations, WorldStar found time to help break some of the era’s most important artists - either by posting their music directly or by doggedly documenting the grassroots support around them. Though it was often dismissed as a repository for lowest-common-denominator entertainment (including fights where people got seriously injured, or where the participants were children), the aggregation site became a hub for a generation of kids in and around hip-hop culture. To know O’Denat at all was to know him as Q, the founder and face of WorldStarHipHop, the wildly popular (and often divisive) website that helped to document - and even to shape - hip-hop culture over the past decade-plus. Last Monday, a man named Lee O’Denat died in San Diego, officially from athersclerotic cardiovascular disease.
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