jeen-yuhs : A Kanye Trilogy part 1 review — A real treat to watch

4.5/5

Kanye West has become the most contentious figure in pop culture lately. He’s made more than his share of outrageous comments; the list of which remains never-ending. He has recently been in the news for a very public meltdown following his divorce with Kim Kardashian, where he lashed out at her current partner Pete Davidson on social media. Long time fans and new as well as the media stand divided on how they should feel about this musician - in light of his history of mental illness, it’s garnered sympathy but his behaviour has been tagged as straight-up harassment and emotionally abusive. Which side do you stand on?

But the Kanye in “act 1: Vision” of jeen-yuhs - a product of two decades worth of footage compiled and directed by Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah - is the start of the Making of Kanye and introduces us to a person that’s entirely different from the hot mess we now know. He’s confident, self-assured and singularly focused on establishing himself as a rapper way, way before he started an avant-garde fashion line, tried to run for president, teased albums only for them to never come out or stand at par with his earlier works.

He’s a young producer/MC from Chicago who’s got stars in his eyes and an ironclad belief in his work. But so does Simmons, who follows him around chronicling just about everything. Simmons says it himself that there was just something about Kanye, a star power waiting to be unleashed to the world.

It was a gamble for Simmons, leaving his own gigs behind, to film an up and coming rapper without any assurance that he will be able to climb up in the music world. He’s a former stand up comic who meets Kanye while hosting Chicago-based cable access show Channel Zero, the only one keenly following the hip hop scene in the city. Besides being Kanye’s personal historian of sorts, he’s also the narrator, filling in the gaps, adding a little context and his perspective as the fly-on-wall footage transitions from one shot to another. Right at the end, he speaks about how often he was asked why he would drop everything to film Kanye. To this, he had to say that when he watched someone’s dreams turn into reality it “showed me, showed everybody that when you move in faith, all things are possible.”

In Part 1 of jeen-yuhs, we see Kanye in New York City; he’s produced half of Jay-Z’s 2001 album The Blueprint and working with some Jermaine Dupri and Foxy Brown as well. We see him crash Roc-a-fella’s New York office (the record label founded by Jay-Z, Damon Dash and Kareem Burke) and play a demo of ‘All Falls Down’ to the many cubicled executives who politely bob their heads only to get distracted by their tasks at hand. He’s never offered a record deal from Roc-a-fella and another label Rawkus Records also passed on signing him. Things do start looking up for the young rapper after MTV’s came knocking on his door. A deal from Roc-a-fella also rolls out, and so does his public induction into the record label family during one of Jay-Z’s concerts.

When Donda West, Kanye’s beloved late mother enters the scene in “act 1: Vision”, one can tell that she’s the driving force behind her son’s energy, will and confidence. The mother-son relationship is a standout moment in the entire 89 minutes of the docu episode. The crew along with Kanye visit her home in Chicago at first, where she readily provides him, and by default us, viewers, with sage advice. “She had a special way of lifting his spirit and giving him the love and guidance he needed. It was easy to see that the confidence he had in himself was because of the confidence Donda had in him,” Simmons says in the voiceover.

jeen-yuhs is a real treat to watch, though it is mostly limited to Simmons’ perspective, which allows us to access Kanye's life with an intimacy that an outsider would never be privy to. This is a humanising portrait of an artist who now has a larger-than-life image. He’s completely inaccessible now, and to think of him as a newbie, who's fighting to be taken seriously almost seems inconceivable. It’s an incarnation of Kanye, shot on a handheld camera entirely, devoid of any studio set-up interviews, that fans will lap up. There’s more in store in this series, as Part 2 and 3 drop soon. Stay tuned.

jeen-yuhs Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix.