Jeen-yuhs

It only mentions the album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy once, barely. The docuseries' main cameraman was not there for that definitive album's creation, so ...

The baffling experience of “Jeen-Yuhs” is to watch Coodie prevail as a cameraman—capturing West’s hustle from producer to rapper to icon, filming eureka studio moments with the ease of everyday life—and then fail his billionaire subject matter’s legacy as a documentarian. The irrelevant parts within "Jeen-Yuhs" are made only more obvious by Kanye West’s actual, monumental relevancy, and the missed opportunity for Coodie’s hard-fought footage to amaze viewers by speaking for itself. Coodie films West in the later end of 2010s, and he has a front-row spot again to albums like 2019’s Jesus is King, or the Madison Square Garden listening party for 2016’s The Life of Pablo, while also capturing West in creative isolation not long after his tearful press conference for his 2020 presidential campaign. The game-changing creative evolution of West is secondary to the series’ main interest—the access that cinematographer Coodie had to the epic saga of West’s career, which started when West was a rising, hungry beat maker and producer in Chicago. Co-directed by Coodie and Chike Ozah, “Jeen-Yuhs” subtitles itself “A Kanye Trilogy” but it’s really the personal log of someone tired of only being the cameraman who followed around West across two decades, and sometimes directed him (Coodie and Ozah did West’s music video debut, “Through the Wire”). Now he wants to be the star of the show. “Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” is an extraordinary fiasco in the history of documentary filmmaking, a treasure trove of footage of superstar Kanye West’s rise to greatness mishandled by a documentarian who keeps it all way too close to his chest. The docuseries' main cameraman was not there for that definitive album’s creation, so it’s just not a priority to what “Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” is actually about.

The first episode of jeen-yuhs, Netflix's new three-part Kanye West documentary directed by Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah, is finally here.

In all likelihood, Kanye was recording vocals for the original version of the song, which featured a Lauryn Hill sample he couldn’t clear. Jermaine Dupri’s 1998 Birthday Party. After a bit of setup from Coodie about the origins of the documentary, we get our first peek at a 21-year-old Kanye tagging along to an interview with former Bad Boy rapper Ma$e and his Harlem World crew. Here we get the full story behind those moments, along with a whole lot more fly-on-wall footage of Kanye's come-up.

Netflix's new documentary trilogy delivers a candid audience with an up-and-coming Ye — way before he changed his name from Kanye West.

But as I watched Kanye blow up, we both soon learned that that love can sometimes turn to hate.” A radio broadcast plays a new diss track by Dug, who phones in to reveal it’s about Ye. “Oh shit.” “That’s me and K West,” Mos says. He rushes between executive suites and meeting rooms, playing the CD for anyone he can pin down to listen, rapping at variously disinterested and bemused marketing heads. Well, a very Ye thing: he, along with Coodie and his camera, turns up unannounced at the Rock-A-Fella office, armed with nowt but an early All Falls Down demo. Here, after all, was a tenacious teenager desperate to make it, driven largely by his abundance of faith and self-belief.

Filmmakers Clarence Simmons and Chike Ozah — better known as Coodie and Chike — have worked with Kanye West on music videos like Through the Wire, ...

When I saw Kanye, I was like, “He’s the one.” He was producing most of the music, but also his stage presence was like, “Yo, this is crazy.” When I ran into him again I was like, “I got to film the dude.” And he moved to New York and I’m watching the first BET Awards. And I’m like, “That’s the same song I heard at the barber shop. But I didn’t know how I was going to get to New York. I didn’t have the money. But the reason why I called him the angel is because I had a condo and had insured my condo, anything that was in my car and the car was insured. And with that, I moved to New York. Everything happens for a reason, good or bad. Chike: Just coming from where we come from, you just got so many reasons to not trust your instincts and follow your passions. How can I spend time?” If we can give our brothers and sisters in these low-income areas an opportunity to believe, give them an advantage off of that, then we did our job with the film. So when I ran into Kanye in Chicago and I saw how charismatic he was and how energetic and talented he was, I’m like, “That was the vision.” When I put the camera on, that was the vision, to document him, not knowing if he wanted me to film him at the time or not. You have to think about all the things that you have not seen yet. I get off on North Avenue on the north side of Chicago and all of a sudden, this angel, whom I call angel now, opened my door with a nine millimeter to my head and was like, “Yo, give me the money.” He wound up taking my car. Clarence “Coodie” Simmons: We have three acts: Act 1 is Vision, Act II is Purpose and Act III is Awakening. I had to have a vision. He would come up and sit up with me, and we would just run it. But I knew he was going to do something great.

A superstar origin story, "jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy" is the product of an extraordinary bet made nearly a quarter-century ago: that young, then-fledgling ...

West's first studio album, "The College Dropout," released in February 2004.West gives a peace sign as he performs at an event in New York in 2003.West is presented with his first platinum album for "The College Dropout" in 2004. West's first studio album, "The College Dropout," released in February 2004.West gives a peace sign as he performs at an event in New York in 2003.West is presented with his first platinum album for "The College Dropout" in 2004. The critically acclaimed album included hits such as "Through the Wire," "Jesus Walks" and "Slow Jamz." West signs autographs for a group of students in 2004.West and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs party together in 2004.West performs "Jesus Walks" on stage during the Grammy Awards in 2005. He later apologized on his blog.West performs his new song "Power" to open the BET Awards in 2010.West and Kim Kardashian talk from their courtside seats at an NBA playoff game in 2012. West was in Uganda to shoot a video in the Murchison game park and to to "feel the energy" for new music. West appears at a listening event for his new album, "Donda," at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2021. He released his first Yeezy sneakers that year.West performs at a Yeezy fashion show in 2016 along with Kid Cudi.Kardashian West takes a selfie as she rides in a classic car with her husband in Havana, Cuba, in 2016. The critically acclaimed album included hits such as "Through the Wire," "Jesus Walks" and "Slow Jamz." West signs autographs for a group of students in 2004.West and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs party together in 2004.West performs "Jesus Walks" on stage during the Grammy Awards in 2005. He later apologized on his blog.West performs his new song "Power" to open the BET Awards in 2010.West and Kim Kardashian talk from their courtside seats at an NBA playoff game in 2012. West was in Uganda to shoot a video in the Murchison game park and to to "feel the energy" for new music. West appears at a listening event for his new album, "Donda," at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2021. He released his first Yeezy sneakers that year.West performs at a Yeezy fashion show in 2016 along with Kid Cudi.Kardashian West takes a selfie as she rides in a classic car with her husband in Havana, Cuba, in 2016.

More than 20 years in the making, Netflix's "Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy" is a too-neat portrait of a disruptive artist.

Coodie betrays few journalistic instincts; when West asks him to shelve his plans to release his documentary in 2006 because “he wasn’t ready for the world to see the real him” — West claims he was simply playing a role for the spotlight — “Jeen-yuhs” offers no elaboration. Spanning about a decade and a half, from the release of “Late Registration,” West’s sophomore album, to 2020, Coodie increasingly finds himself on the outs as the rapper explodes in fame and controversy. “Jeen-yuhs” feels like the co-director’s way of saying that they’re right to feel that way. But the co-director’s apparent hesitation to ask follow-up questions also deprives us of West’s emotions and reactions at crucial junctures, such as when his subject declares, without a trace of irony, that the revelation he had in his hospital bed after cheating death was to aspire to become hip-hop’s best-dressed rapper. Narrated by Coodie, “Jeen-yuhs” often feels like the co-director’s attempts to make the world see West through the eyes of a longtime pal like himself, but we don’t get enough context for their relationship for that point of view to fully develop. “Jeen-yuhs” takes us inside West’s extremely early-20s apartments in Chicago, where he grew up, and New York, where he moved to pursue a record deal.