Simmons, whose voice pops up regularly elsewhere in the docuseries to add context, declines to explain much in moments like this. "I took bipolar medication last night to have a normal conversation and turn alien into English." "Have you guys ever been locked up in handcuffs and put into a hospital because your brain was too big for your skull?" Kanye asks, his voice's diction sounding markedly different than in the docuseries' earlier installments. After he finally got signed by Roc-A-Fella, the rapper was in a 2002 car accident which broke his jaw in three places – leading him to create a song while his mouth was still wired shut, called Through the Wire.Ĭulture Kanye West Tweets, Then Deletes, Claims Of His Family's Concern - And More Seeing the real stories behind a legendįans will see behind the scenes of key moments in Kanye's legend.
#Genius gangsta rap made me do it series#
When she dies of coronary artery disease and other factors in 2007 – the docuseries features audio of the 911 call – jeen-yuhs implies this loss presages a troubling series of issues for Kanye, whose public outbursts grow more erratic after his mother's passing. It's obvious how her doting, powerful belief in Kanye fuels his own outrageous self-confidence (the second episode opens with home video footage of Kanye, at about 13 years old or so, rapping confidently at a family gathering). Even casual fans know how much she has influenced his music, and in the first two installments of jeen-yuhs, we see them together a lot. Speaking of Kanye's mother, Donda West her presence casts a long shadow. He talks openly about being a momma's boy. At a time when gangsta rap is hot, he hasn't got street cred as an outlaw. Kanye eventually admits to the camera that he's not like typical MCs. He has to pull out his retainer to spit rhymes properly. Here is where jeen-yuhs really pulls us into Kanye's world – in one key scene, he walks the halls of Roc-A-Fella's New York headquarters, jumping into offices to perform his songs for random executives. He has produced a sizable chunk of Jay-Z's landmark record The Blueprint, but finds even the executives at Hova's label Roc-A-Fella records wish he would stop bugging them and just keep cranking out dope beats for other artists.
Indeed, the best thing about the first two-thirds of jeen-yuhs is how it centers the narrative on Kanye's music.Īs the docuseries begins, Kanye is desperate for a record deal as a recording artist. His narration and observations help mold what often seems like a collection of home video clips into a compelling story.
Simmons, a former standup comic who met Kanye in the mid-1990s while hosting a groundbreaking Chicago-based cable access show on rap called Channel Zero, is the viewer's guide through much of this. Here, the most valuable moments are when Simmons lets the camera run as Kanye jumps from topic to topic in a way that appears as if his mind is racing too fast for his mouth to keep up. The last installment ranges from the mid 2000s to 2020, when his friends – filmmakers Clarence "Coodie" Simmons and Chike Ozah – grew distant from Kanye and couldn't provide the fly-on-the-wall perspective that makes the first two parts such a treasure. Unlikely as it seems now, back then, rap labels and executives weren't sure that this skinny kid who had cooked up compelling beats for Jay-Z, Jermaine Dupri and Foxy Brown could really sell records on his own as a rapper – particularly after Kanye was in a car accident that created serious concerns about whether he could ever spit rhymes again. The first two episodes cover an intense time from the late 1990s until the mid 2000s, when Kanye had to convince the rap world he was more than just a talented producer. That's not a bad average for an ambitious project: Assembled from footage recorded by old friends who have been trailing the mercurial rap star with a camera for over 20 years, jeen-yuhs spans more than four hours divided into chunks about 90 minutes each. Netflix's new docuseries, jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, is truly genius.for the first two-thirds, at least.
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