Netflix’s Kanye West Docuseries ‘Jeen-yuhs’ Ends on a Dark and Disturbing Note
No artist can hype up a project like Kanye West, and the buzz around Jeen-yuhs, a docuseries chronicling Ye’s rise from the streets of Chicago to global icon, was deafening. Over two decades in the making, Clarence “Coodie” Simmons and Chike Ozah’s diaristic, fly-on-the-wall portrait of West was scooped up by Netflix for $30 million—only to have their subject, rather cheekily, demand final cut (or “be in charge of my own image”) prior to its Feb. 16 debut on the streamer. Despite his protestations, the three-part film premiered Sunday night during the virtual 2022 Sundance Film Festival, granting viewers a peek into the wild world of West.
Sadly, a peek is all you get over the course of the doc’s 4.5-hour runtime.
The story begins in 1998, as Coodie, an aspiring stand-up comic and host of the Chicago public access show Channel Zero, conducts an interview with a young West at a 1998 birthday party for Jermaine Dupri. Soft-spoken, bespectacled, and hiding in the shadows of rapper Ma$e and his Harlem World crew, West is a far cry from the paragon of shameless bravado he would soon become. A friendship forms between filmmaker and subject, and as West’s star rises, producing beats for a range of artists from Roc-A-Fella and Rawkus Records, he hires Coodie & Chike to document his every move, so convinced was he in his own eventual stardom—and they in turn hope to create the Hoop Dreams of hip-hop docs.