jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy

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 Any documentary about his life will become outdated sometime between pressing play and watching the credits roll.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.