How was Kanye West before becoming the star he became? This is what the first part of Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, the three-part documentary on the American rapper that Netflix broadcasts from Wednesday, February 16. The co-author of this film is a longtime friend, Coodie Simmons, originally like him from Chicago. He believed in himself from his first steps as a producer in 1998 and decided to film him, not hesitating to drop everything in 2002 to follow him to New York in his quest for recognition. “There was no doubt for me that he was going to be a star“, recalls Coodie, who provides voice-over narration.
Of the three parts of this documentary series, this one is probably the most interesting (even if we haven’t seen the other two yet). She kind of shows us the “true” face of Ye, the one his early fans miss. In 2000, this young producer already took up a lot of space on the screen. Hard worker, big show-off, always on the move, in a hurry to arrive, he is terribly apparently sure of himself.
Yet he is chomping at the bit. The road to success is long and full of pitfalls. The main one, once arriving in New York and with a rising reputation for producing five tracks from Jay-Z’s major album The Blueprint, is to be seen only as a producer. A good producer, certainly, but not a rapper-producer. Nobody wants that, nobody believes in it in the record companies, including that of Jay-Z, Roc-A-Fella Records, where he tries in vain to attract attention.
In his cluttered apartment in New York, we witness the work on his first solo album (the excellent The College Dropout released in 2004), a project that he has always cherished. We see him rhyming to his own beats and recording himself. The lyrics are fabulous. The flow is great. The amazing sounds. Behind the screen, the viewer is annoyed and surprised. Why can’t they see the guy is awesome? My scrapbook,it’s a real breath of fresh air“, he explains to Coodie’s camera. “My mom taught me a lot of stuff I need to talk about. (…) I’m not going to rap ‘I’m going to kill you’ because that’s what works in the industry. I don’t give a fuck about the industry. When I make this album it’s gonna be the purest shit you’ll ever hear ’cause if I mess up I can still eat (as a producer editor’s note). So I’ll make my album as I want“, he promises.
Despite the disappointments and the labels’ unkept promises of signing, Kanye never lets himself be defeated. He is holding up. Clings to his dreams. He’ll be a rapper-producer and he’ll put America at his feet”I have fangs. I’ve never been served anything on a platter“, he explains to a journalist while he has been in New York for a year. “I think I’m a star“, he also lets go, letting it be understood without laughing that he has already been rehearsing his speech for a while for when he receives his first Grammy. Pure Kanye megalomaniac as we loved him then.
To break through, he is looking to be a guest on the MTV show You Hear it First which can change everything for him. Coodie Simmons will help him enormously in this process since MTV orders images of Kanye from the director in order to feed a portrait. We quickly understand, this camera constantly on his heels impresses his interlocutors. She gives him importance. Which hasn’t stopped Kanye West from making a lot of noise in recent weeks about this documentary, demanding a right to watch and the “final cut”. So far, we do not see what he could find fault with. Unless it’s a common plan…
Their hometown of Chicago, where Coodie and Kanye return to attend a music convention, in any case offers this first part of the documentary its strongest moments, except for the delectable sequence in New York, in which Kanye raps side by side with Mos Def with passion and aggressiveness, almost to eat the camera (see video above).
In Chi-Town (Chicago’s nickname), his old friends do not welcome him with open arms. Dug Infinite, who, along with producer No ID, introduced him to beat making, is offended that he was not quoted by Kanye West in an interview. It opens in a rap, which Kanye discovers on the radio while he is in the car, and of course always filmed. Wounded, he will not hesitate for a second to go and explain himself frankly with the person concerned while waiting for him at the exit of a radio broadcast. Where we rediscover the whole and ballsy Kanye.
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And then there are the great scenes with his mother Donda who disappeared in 2007. This sunny and smiling woman, an English teacher at the University of Chicago, who raised her son alone, is an essential piece of the Kanye puzzle. To see her and to hear her, when Kanye and Coodie invite themselves without warning to her home, we understand where the enormous self-confidence of the artist comes from. Proud of her offspring, sure of her talent, Donda West is her first admirer. “You are the Michael Jordan of music“, she lets go of him. “When you work so hard, so well and for so long, it always pays off“But she’s also lucid -“he was always self-centered” – and good advice: “You have your feet on the ground, but you are very confident. Sometimes it passes for arrogance“, she warns him, inviting him to “keep your feet on the ground” and “to fly away at the same time.”
Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy by Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah. The first episode of this three-act documentary can be seen on Netflix since Wednesday February 16, 2022, before two other episodes in the following weeks.