There’s no denying that Kanye West is a prominent force in the music industry and pop culture. The 44-year old music mogul is as inescapable as death and taxes. If you open your music library, he’s there. If you look at the apparel on the passersby, he’s there. If you turn on the news, it might not be flattering, but he’s there too. The man of many names - Ye, Yeezy, Yeezus, included - hasn’t just defined the culture of the last twenty years, he’s made it a personal mission to be the culture. And, like in nearly every endeavor, Kanye West has succeeded. The richest black rapper in American history continually finds himself at the epicenter of controversy, the top of music charts, and under the curious (and often appalled) gaze of billions. 

That’s what makes footage of a teenage Kanye sulking in the shadows of Jermaine Dupri’s birthday party in 1998 so shocking. 

That 1998 birthday party is where jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, Netflix’s four and a half hour documentary from Chike Ozah and Coodie Simmons, begins. Kanye West - a teenage producer and relative nobody in the music world - is captured on film by soon-to-be friend and coworker Coodie Simmons. For the next twenty-odd years, Coodie would document the rise of Kanye from high school beat-maker to one of the 21st century’s most influential artists.

While jeen-yuhs spans almost twenty-five years, the bulk of the three acts (entitled: Vision, Purpose, and Awakening) takes place between 1998 and 2004, as Kanye breaks into the music scene and begins working his way to the release of his debut album, The College Dropout. Coodie, once a stand-up comic and host on Chicago’s Channel Zero TV, never seems to leave Kanye’s side during these years.

The first three hours of jeen-yuhs consist of staggering home footage of Kanye and crew. The raw, shot-from-the-hip video reels show Kanye at his most relatable: a kid trying to make it big in an industry that continually shrugs him off. These hours of film are balanced and heartwarming. We’re brought along with Kanye as he navigates the music industry, the camera, a first-person stand-in for the audience. We aren't shown the “made for TV” celebrity or even the essential plot points of Ye’s story. We’re seeing it all: the fast food orders, the car rides, the games of pool. Softly, in the background of nearly all these scenes, the traces of what will become Kanye’s debut album can be heard. It’s a brilliant approach to filmmaking, lulling audiences into a hospitable familiarity in every scene while keeping us keenly aware that what we are hearing and seeing is merely the foundation of Kanye’s success. 

It’s a miracle this footage exists in the first place. Coodie took a chance, and ended up filming the creation of nearly every song on The College Dropout. Jeen-yuhs’ first two acts are punctuated by scenes of Kanye debuting “All Falls Down” to unimpressed Roc-A-Fella execs, “Family Business” to lyrical legend Scarface, and “Through the Wire” to a young but wise Pharrell Williams. But even when Kanye isn’t in the studio, the camera stays rolling. Coodie captures Kanye vulnerably confronting one of his childhood mentors, Dug Infinite, after he released a diss track against Kanye. He captures Donda West taking Kanye back to his childhood home on the southside of Chicago. He even captures the dental surgeries Kanye underwent following his infamous and nearly fatal car accident in 2002 (much to the chagrin of his dentist). All of these pieces paint Kanye for who he truly was at the time - a prideful young man, doing whatever it took to make it. Still a David, not yet a Goliath.

Of course, no spoilers here, Ye would eventually become the giant of all giants. Jeen-yuhs is a perfect reminder of why Kanye rose to fame: the music. Ye’s music has always been intoxicating, but to see its creation up close is a thing of wonder. If there’s one constant in the life of Kanye and in this documentary, it’s the success of his music. Coodie captures the very beginning of that success. The camera that once filmed the teenage Kanye stays on him as he accepts his first Grammy Awards and sets out on his first tour. But after the death of his mother Donda, Kanye - now a superstar - begins to drift apart from his documentary-making brothers, and so too does jeen-yuhs drift away from Kanye’s roots. 

The trilogy’s third act (Awakening) is as messy as the contemporary man it focuses on. There’s a six year period where Coodie and Chike didn’t lay a lens on Kanye. That six year span, from 2008 to 2014, unfortunately just so happened to be the peak of Kanye West’s career. Bookended by two revolutionary albums, 808s and Heartbreak and Yeezus, Kanye also made a collaborative album with Jay-Z, Watch the Throne, and the most critically acclaimed album of the 21st century, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

I’d be remiss to not mention my own warring admiration and disgust with Kanye West. On the one hand, what Coodie captures in Kanye’s earliest days and the accomplished albums that followed are what made me a fan of the musician. He ran the culture in those days, and his inescapable pull made it exhilarating to run alongside him. On the other hand, the years that have followed the success of those albums have been riddled with the kinds of controversies and outbursts that make it painfully awkward and often unacceptable to stand by Kanye. Jeen-yuhs, much like Kanye himself, is at its best when it allows us to step inside a time machine and go back to the Kanye we once loved.

Unfortunately, the peak of Kanye West’s career is but a passing headline in a time jump to 2014, when the documentarians and Kanye begin to reunite. And that’s when jeen-yuhs goes from a thorough and intimate look at the meteoric rise of a modern master, to a muddied attempt to clarify the controversial enigma that Kanye West has become.

Kanye, after all, is a different man when they begin filming him again in the late 2010s. The relationship between Coodie, Chike, and Kanye is painfully different as well. It’s strained, uncomfortable to view; a complete distraction from the intimate kinship they had in making the “original” documentary together in the early 2000s. Where Awakening most clearly suffers is Coodie’s attempt to reconcile his job as an impartial documentarian with his responsibility as a friend. When Kanye is at his most vulnerable, in the midst of increasingly alarming mental health episodes, Coodie cuts his camera off, only to resume once Kanye has calmed down. Where jeen-yuhs had once been a fly on the wall of Kanye’s biggest moments, it quickly devolves into arguments from behind the camera attempting to sway Yeezy away from Tucker Carlson clips, to no avail. As a viewer and a fan, it makes me want to pause the documentary and restart it from the beginning; to (once again) spend those hours with a young, hungry, and thoroughly enjoyable Kanye West, instead of the contemporary West that already enshrouds so much of our everyday culture.

It’s a disappointing and emotionally baffling ending to what is otherwise a very tender, well edited, and miraculous close-up of a superstar’s earliest days. Jeen-yuhs was, at first, the creation story for the self-titled “God of culture.” To spend three hours with “the old Kanye” - the backpacks, the pink polos, the retainers that have to come out before he steps up to the mic - is a refreshing nostalgia hit, capturing the man who was once a relatable hero to all, including myself. That jeen-yuhs ends with “the new Kanye” is an unfortunate reminder of where that career has taken Ye: down a dark and twisted road marred with mental health struggles, the blinding spotlight, and the unknowable pressure of superstardom - the very road that jeen-yuhs was seemingly taking us away from. I suppose this is to be expected when offering up stories about Kanye West, though. Try as they may, Kanye is too big, too brash, too bothersome to be captured in only the best light. 

“Everybody feel a way about K,” Ye once prophesied, “but at least y’all feel something.” 

That too is undeniable.

Acting/Casting - 2 | Visual Effects and Editing - 2 | Story and Message - 1 | Entertainment value - 1 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 2 | Reviewer’s Preference - 2 | What does this mean?

Total: 4 out of 5 Stars, 10/12