WorldStarHipHop founder Lee O’Denat, who was known by his nickname “Q,” died on Monday, January 23, TMZ reported on Tuesday. He was in his mid-40s.
The CEO died in his sleep, and although the autopsy has not been completed, a source told TMZ that the entertainment mogul died of a heart attack.
O’Denat founded the popular news and gossip site in 2005 with his wife, Brianna Padilla, to distribute rap mixtapes. It later evolved to feature music videos, viral content, fight videos, sports clips and more. When crazy events would happen on the streets, bystanders would submit smartphone footage to WorldStarHipHop, which catapulted it to one of the biggest websites for the hip-hop community.
His website is controversial, but O’Denat defended its explicit videos. “Hip-hop is for the sex, the drugs, the violence, the beefs, the culture. That’s the competitiveness of hip-hop, so I felt like the site needed to be R-rated,” he told The New York Times in 2015. “People may be offended by some of the content, but hey, the internet is not a censorship boat. We’re the Carnival cruise, man. You don’t have to log on.”
According to The New York Times profile, O’Denat was raised by a single mother and fell in love with computers while working at Circuit City during the early days of the internet. “I was telling people, ‘This is the future,’” he said. “They were like, ‘This is going nowhere.’ They laughed at me.”
