jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy Act 2 (Purpose) review

The Netflix three-part Kanye West documentary, jeen-yuhs, has generated many positive reviews since debuting last week.

The documentary follows Kanye on his journey in the music business. The second act of jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, a Netflix documentary series about Kanye West directed by Coodie & Chike, hit Netflix on Wednesday, Feb. 23. The third and final part of the three-part documentary series will release next week.

Act 2 of the documentary mostly occurs after the car accident that almost took his life. In this documentary, we see Kanye going to the dental surgeon and performing the hit song All falls at Def Poetry Jam, but most of the footage is Kanye working on his debut album.

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy Act 2 (Purpose) review

The opening scene of Act 2 shows footage of a young Kanye rapping at a family function and smiling because even back then, he knew his raps were worth listening to. We can see Kanye with other artists signed to Roc-A-Fella at the Paid in Full news conference in part 2.

Dame Dash says, “A lot is going on at Roc-A-Fella,” which was proper because the label was stacked with artists such as Jay-Z, Cam’ron, Beanie Sigel, and Freeway. It is important to note that even though Kanye was signed to one of the biggest record labels, he still had to prove that he belonged there because Roc-A-Fella did not open up the album budget for Kanye yet.

In the next scene, we see recording sessions with Jay-Z for The Blueprint 2, where we know Kanye hustles his way onto two songs. First, he asked Jay-Z to let him rap on a Timbaland-produced track, “The Bounce,” which Jay-Z allowed, and Kanye could get on the hook of “Never Change” off of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 2 album.

We can also see Jay-Z and his longtime engineer, Young Guru, coach Kanye through his verse. In one of the most exciting parts of the documentary, we watch Kanye freestyle his verses in his head like Jay-Z is known to do. According to Coodie, Kanye didn’t write his verses; instead, he would ask Coodie to record him rapping and play the footage back to refresh his memory.

The documentary then shows Kanye adding his verse to the Paid in Full soundtrack track “Champions.” It’s not the most known song in the Kanye catalog, but it should stand out to fans because it highlighted how determined Kanye was to become a superstar. Dame Dash originally asked Just Blaze to flip the sample but refused, so Kanye quickly jumped at the chance to do it and impress Dame.

The Kanye West that people say that miss was on full display in part 2 of the Netflix documentary. We got to see Kanye’s love for soulful beats and the creation of one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever made. In one scene, Jamie Foxx records the “Slow Jamz” hook, which became the songs from the album that helped Kanye get radio play. While The College Dropout created serval Top 40 hits, “Slow Jamz” was the only song on the album to go No. 1.

One of my favorite parts of Act 2 is seeing Kanye play music for Pharrell, who was impressed by Kanye West’s talent. Pharrell was one of the hottest producers in the music industry at the time, so for him to be amazed at Kanye’s skill was amazing to see.

Part 2 is focused on The College Dropout, but we get to see some film of him working on Late Registration. The latest episode of the docuseries closes with Kanye winning the Best Rap album for The College Dropout. When Kanye talks about people wondering if he would do something crazy if he lost, it feels like a foreshadowing of him interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs a couple of years later.

The first two parts showed us the rise of one of the greatest artists of this generation. In the third and final part of the documentary, we should expect to see the moments that made fans look at Kanye differently because his actions weren’t being looked at as something to be used as motivation.