Earlier this year, reports flooded in that Netflix had successfully landed a $30 million deal with Kanye West to make a documentary about the trailblazing trajectory of the rapper’s career. In the pitch for the documentary, Kanye was described as being “50 per cent more influential than Stanley Kubrick, Pablo Picasso and Apostle Paul.”
The project is being directed by Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah, Kanye’s longtime collaborators who have been working with him since 1998 and even directed the music video for his debut single ‘Through The Wire.’ Titled jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, the new Netflix project has already made it to the top of the watchlists maintained by fans.
The directors have insisted that this will be an “intimate” project which will capture “both his formative days trying to break through and his life today as a global brand and artist.” It will provide relevant insights into the life and times of one of the most influential and controversial music icons in the current political landscape.
“He would come with beats,” Simmons recalled, remembering how he met West when the rapper was a little boy coming to a Chicago barbershop for haircuts. “I remember he had the one beat that JAY-Z picked later on in life called H to Izz-O [‘Izzo (H.O.V.A.)’]. Yo, this was so ill. Here was this kid with braces … talented. This dude wasn’t scared of nothing.”
Co-director Ozah says of the documentary as a “whole history lesson of music”. He also notes: “We’re crossing generations in three films. At the end, Kanye is collaborating with artists that were babies. But the crazy part is that Kanye’s a through-line; still as relevant at the end as he is in the beginning because his music passes the test of time.”
Watch the Netflix promo for the new Kanye West documentary below.
