jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (Season 1)

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (2022) is a documentary series you can watch online on iFILM. Filmmaker Coodie Simmons started rolling tape back in the early 2000s, when Kanye West was a beatmaker desperate to be taken seriously as a rapper. The industry shrugged. Simmons kept filming anyway, with no idea where it would lead.

Three feature-length parts are cut from those tapes: a kid with a demo hustling through the Roc-A-Fella offices, butting heads with the label, dropping "The College Dropout," and over twenty years becoming one of the loudest and most divisive names in music. Jay-Z, Pharrell Williams, Mos Def, Damon Dash and dozens more wander through the frame, caught in the moment rather than staged. Directors Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah assembled the whole thing from footage shot across two decades.

There's nothing glossy here — it's a long, close-up look that runs from total obscurity to fame to the stretches where the ground gives out under him. Best for viewers curious about the person behind the myth, before the myth took over. Stream jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy (2022) online on iFILM.