Perspective

The second act of jeen-yuhs shows us Ye’s struggle to establish himself as a legitimate rapper and the slow, difficult birth of his debut album: The College Dropout.

By Anwuli Onwaeze

Last Wednesday, Kanye’s tale continued in the second part of the jee-yuhs documentary: Perspective. West has just been signed to Roc-a-Fella records and was excited to deliver a new sound to the label, but very quickly realized that the label wasn’t as invested as they made it seem. The label still saw him as a producer and didn’t support him much as a rapper. It seemed like they signed him to keep him around as a producer. Kanye found himself in the same cycle of pacification-for-profit the label had him in the whole time. 

The conflict between him and the label could be seen as foreshadowing Kanye’s current actions in the music industry. He just released his newest album Donda 2 on a stem player in an effort to push artists to look at how they can start controlling their own art. 

If you saw the vigor Kanye used to back himself in the first part of the documentary, you would know he wouldn’t take this treatment in silence. He landed himself a spot on Jay-Z’s Blueprint 2, not only producing, but rapping with him for the first time as well. Afterwards, he made his way to the west coast  to produce for Peedi Crakk. This is when disaster struck. 

After a night in the studio, on his way home, Kanye was involved in a nearly fatal car crash. Fortunately, he made it out, but his jaw was shattered in three places. The devastation from the injuries and rehabilitation was not Kanye’s main worry: he had to think about how he would continue working on music with his jaw wired shut. This was an important time in his career, he had to keep the momentum up from his signing or he’d be another one of Chicago’s fallen artists. 

After the accident, Roc-a-Fella Records was even less invested in Kanye. They wouldn’t commit to a release date or fund the album he was making: The College Dropout. Nevertheless, Kanye continued to recover and work on his album without the aid from the label. We see Kanye showing a young Jamie Foxx his sultry track, “Slow Jamz” and Foxx delivering the smooth vocals which would make the song one of the classics on The College Dropout. He recruits Ludacris for his song “Breathe In Breathe Out”. The last of the features we see is the enthralling performance of a church choir which would be layered with Kanye’s voice in the chorus of “Through the Wire”. West saw and recruited several other people in the making of this album. Without the help of Roc-a-Fella, he borrowed studio time from fellow artists. He funded all of this by simultaneously continuing to produce for other artists.

I think this act highlights the second hump Kanye had to overcome in jump starting his career. We get to see the collaborations and interactions which helped him push through and release the best selling album of his career. Through it all, Kanye kept his tongue in cheek humor and stubbornness. Again, his belief in himself overruled other’s disbelief in him proving once again:

"There might be better rappers, better programmers, but I have the heart."- Ye