jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy

"jeen-yuhs" is a vital document on how we got this far.

jeen-yuhs Act 1 clearly only scratches the surface, with a lot more to come from Kanye's life, including the tragic death of his mother in 2007, and some of the more controversial parts of his life (no doubt the MAGA hat will make an appearance), but stick with it, because this documentary really does set the precedent for all future biographies.

After almost five hours that flew by like one and could have held my attention for 10 more just like them, “jeen-yuhs” left me less curious about how we might be able to escape from Kanye West than it did about how Kanye West might be able to escape from himself.

Is your preferred archetype of Kanye the hungry, deeply focused, self-made scrapper who showed everybody? Or the openly bipolar billionaire whose run for president felt more like a box to check on a list of Ultimate Hubris moments than anything even half-seriously intended? Both Kanyes are on view in “Jeen-yuhs,” with a story that necessarily comes off deeply bifurcated, given that a plot is something West would seem to have lost along the way. But what a Horatio Alger story it is.

Overall, Jeen-Yuhs succeeds in elucidating Kanye’s journey to stardom, though ultimately its intimacy feels professional rather than personal. The documentary is valuable to audience members who want to know more of the details behind the stories he tells on the last track of The College Dropout, “Last Call,” and learn more about his close relationship with his mother. For fans, listeners, and viewers who want insight into the last half-decade of Kanye’s public mishaps, there’s a little there, but not a lot.

“Jeen-Yuhs” is a compassionate record of the journey.

Extremely watchable, unfiltered trilogy (of which two episodes were available for review) is as much about the power of turbo-charged self-belief as it is about genius.

On one level, all of this amounts to a heartwarming tale of persistence, struggle against the odds and justified self-belief.

The opening act, titled “Vision”, will have you feeling all manner of things towards Kanye West – most of them good.

Whether this documentary series unfolds as triumph or tragedy, it is already succeeding in providing a richly nuanced picture of one of the great talents of our times.

Simmons clearly lionizes his old friend, and while we see flashes of Ye’s legendary temper and mercurial nature, what comes across most impressively is the handheld portrait of a young artist refusing to give up his dreams or accept a certain level of success or to be labeled by, well, his label.

If Visions is anything to go by, jeen-yuhs excels as a profile of an embryonic artist whose flight towards the sun just hasn’t burned his wings yet.

This [third] episode is less narratively satisfying and coherent than the first two, but Simmons’s indiscriminate eye and his pre-existing comfort with West end up as assets.

In the broadest terms, there's something fascinating about this Netflix presentation, which had its roots in Clarence "Coodie" Simmons identifying West's potential in 1998, while hosting a public-access show in Chicago.

At times it works, as West gazes at negative news clips about him on his phone. It’s in these moments that Jeen-Yuhs achieves the previously unthinkable: cocky and ultra confident he might be, West is human, too.

The episode is highly watchable when West is hanging out with his friends, professing his love for Chicago or delivering incredibly catchy freestyles. In the moments between these ones, however, jeen-yuhs feels a little bit lost.

While it doesn’t come close to those lofty heights [the Hoop Dreams of hip-hop docs], Jeen-yuhs does contain plenty of inspiring and heartfelt moments. ... By [2017], however, the arrangement has changed. Instead of trailing West wherever he went, filming is mostly limited to the occasional party and/or recording session. ... At various points, the filmmakers even opt to stop filming West as he starts to spiral in order to preserve their friend’s reputation.

The film very much mimics Yeezy’s career in that it’s impressive, then nearly exhilarating, only to grow exhausting and a bit insufferable in its final sections.

The first installment, vision, is the most interesting and entertaining, mostly by virtue of catching West at an embryonic stage of unguarded ambition. ... The film’s final installment, awakening, offers an uneasy, very incomplete portrait of the star’s rocky experiences leading up to the pandemic, plagued by public speculation about his mental state. ... Any documentary about his life will become outdated sometime between pressing play and watching the credits roll. This one has big holes long before that.

“Jeen-Yuhs” recklessly breaks unwritten rules about doc filmmaking, about how to best frame someone else's story, and for no larger purpose than to serve its creators. 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.

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.

Directors Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah seem so concerned with the rapper’s possible reaction to the film and so desirous of staying on his good side that they barely glance at anything he might find unpleasant. ... Still, if you want to know what Kanye West is like, “Jeen-yuhs” will get you beyond media caricature, as well as the egomaniacal self-parody that West sometimes plays.