Back to All News
How jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy' Filmmakers Pulled the Curtain Back on One of Music's Biggest Stars
Netflix Staff
Entertainment
16 February 2022
GlobalUnited States
Filmmakers Clarence Simmons and Chike Ozah - better known as Coodie and Chike - have worked with Kanye West on music videos like Through the Wire, "Two Words" and "Jesus Walks." But their latest collaboration was much longer than a four-minute song and took a bit more time to make.
jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy is a sprawling three-part documentary made over 21 years. An intimate and revealing portrait of Kanye West's experience, the doc showcases both his formative days trying to break through and his life today as a global brand and artist.
To celebrate the docuseries' Netflix debut, the filmmakers discuss how they cut down 400 hours down to the four-hour final product, how they funded the project's early days and what they hope viewers take away from the documentary.
What can viewers expect?
Clarence Coodie Simmons: We have three acts: Act 1 is Vision, Act II is Purpose and Act III is Awakening. I had to have a vision. So when I ran into Kanye in Chicago and I saw how charismatic he was and how energetic and talented he was, I'm like, That was the vision. When I put the camera on, that was the vision, to document him, not knowing if he wanted me to film him at the time or not. It's just one of those gradual things that happened. I knew his style somewhat didn't fit with the rappers back then. It was different. But I knew he was going to do something great.
What do you want viewers to take away from the trilogy?
Chike Ozah: If you put your mind toward your passions and have faith in God, you can achieve anything. It doesn't come without hard work; it doesn't come without adversities; it doesn't come without strains in friendship. But if you keep pushing through for years, you will eventually succeed. Kanye's a billionaire, but when we first start this film, Kanye's not a billionaire by any means. So even just seeing that growth. It's definitely empowering.
How did you go about editing down 400 hours of footage into four?
Coodie: It was a team process. We have brilliant editors, Max Allman and Jason Harper and Byron Leon, who dug into these tapes. They were finding things that I forgot that I had. You have to think about all the things that you have not seen yet. So we had to be real strategic about the storytelling.
What do you remember about meeting Kanye for the first time?
Chike: I met Kanye much later than Coodie, when I was working at MTV. It was so refreshing because he was another brother that appreciated art and design, and I could have conversations with him. I was the only Black person on MTV's design team. He would come up and sit up with me, and we would just run it. That was refreshing and that's pretty much initially how we bonded.
Coodie: I just bonded with Kanye like a little brother. I'm a lot older than Kanye. He had a group called The Go Getters. They were performing one night and I'm looking at them. When I saw Kanye, I was like, He's the one. He was producing most of the music, but also his stage presence was like, Yo, this is crazy. When I ran into him again I was like, I got to film the dude. And he moved to New York and I'm watching the first BET Awards. And I'm like, That's the same song I heard at the barber shop. That's Kanye.
But I didn't know how I was going to get to New York. I didn't have the money. Then one day, I'm driving on the freeway. I get off on North Avenue on the north side of Chicago and all of a sudden, this angel, whom I call angel now, opened my door with a nine millimeter to my head and was like, Yo, give me the money. He wound up taking my car. But the reason why I called him the angel is because I had a condo and had insured my condo, anything that was in my car and the car was insured. So I got a lump sum of money. And with that, I moved to New York. Everything happens for a reason, good or bad.
Can you talk about how this trilogy can serve as an inspiration, particularly for younger viewers?
Chike: Just coming from where we come from, you just got so many reasons to not trust your instincts and follow your passions. A lot of times, we just really out here trying to survive. So nobody ever really had an opportunity to afford any time to just sit and think about, What do I actually want to do with my life? How can I spend time? If we can give our brothers and sisters in these low-income areas an opportunity to believe, give them an advantage off of that, then we did our job with the film.
Act 1 of jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy is now available to stream on Netflix.
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
29/04/2024
(L-R) Mark Gatiss and Polly Walker on set
Monday 29 April 2024 Further casting is now confirmed for Bookish (6x70), a brand-new drama created by Emmy Award-wi...
29/04/2024
A groundbreaking initiative offering training and mentoring to 30 women journali...
29/04/2024
Even though we've been doing this for over 40 years, a spark of excitement r...
29/04/2024
L3Harris is delivering manpack radios to U.S. Army CH-47 Chinooks as part of the Air-to-Ground Networking Radio program, providing seamless, resilient communica...
29/04/2024
He writes in Defense One: Despite the near-universal acknowledgement throughout the U.S. government and defense industrial base of the criticality of resilient ...
29/04/2024
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
29/04/2024
Codemill aims to revolutionize media workflow efficiency at this years NAB Show by introducing Just-In-Time (JIT) playback technology in Accurate.Video Validate...
29/04/2024
April 29, 2024
-- TF1 Chooses Broadpeak to Power Targeted Advertising for New...
29/04/2024
LOS ANGELES Allen Media Group (AMG) has partnered with LG Electronics to bring 223 Local Now FAST channels to LG's free streaming service, LG Channels, avai...
29/04/2024
OTTAWA Ross Video has announced the introduction of Raiden, a data-driven weather graphics software that combines data gathering, processing, and visualization ...
29/04/2024
Panalux, a leading rental provider of lighting and power solutions for the motion-picture industry and part of Panavision's end-to-end service offerings for...
29/04/2024
Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, today announced that it has received a patent on its technology for dynamic autho...
29/04/2024
SDVI, the leading platform provider for cloud-native media supply chains, today announced that Rally Access Workstation, a fully managed solution for editing in...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, a premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality remote commenta...
29/04/2024
Glookast has chosen Jigsaw24 Media as the only UK channel partner to represent their portfolio of ingest and workflow optimisation products. The agreement, sign...
29/04/2024
Clear-Com played a pivotal role in the seamless coverage of the recent solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. Leveraging its cutting-edge Eclipse HX Digital Matrix i...
29/04/2024
PlayBox Neo will promote its complete range of television channel management, graphic branding and playout solutions to EMEA region media content owners and bro...
29/04/2024
Lingo, RuPaul's word-twisting game show, returns for season two on CBS Friday, May 24. Two episodes air that night, and stream on Paramount Plus, too....
29/04/2024
ESPN and Amazon Prime Video are reportedly close to scoring television rights to the National Basketball Association, according to published reports....
29/04/2024
Judge Judy and Hot Bench, CBS Media Ventures' genre-leading court shows, have been renewed through the 2025-26 TV season in more than 95% of the country, Gr...
29/04/2024
Premier Sports, an Irish-based premium sports broadcaster, has selected QuickLink's Remote Commentary solution for introducing professional, high-quality re...
29/04/2024
The awards celebrate the craft of behind-the-scenes TV talent and the best programmes of 2023
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: April 29, 2024
The awards cel...
29/04/2024
The team at Milk had to create and deliver the VFX and environment work for the royal residences featured in the drama from scratch
By Jenny Priestley
Publis...
29/04/2024
CEO Bob Bakish is expected to leave the company as early as today, with a new leadership committee likely to run the company on an interim basis
By Jenny Pries...
29/04/2024
Albena Ivanova, director, media and entertainment and strategic products at CHAOS talks to TVBEurope about her route into the industry
By TVBEurope Staff
Pub...
29/04/2024
The acquisition gives Grand Technix the opportunity to expand its footprint in the audio visual and broadcast technology sectors
By Jenny Priestley
Published...
29/04/2024
29 04 2024 - Media release Screen Australia announces James J. Robinson's debut feature First Light
First Light
Principal Photography is underway on Firs...
29/04/2024
Capitol Broadcasting recently became the inaugural company honored with inductio...
29/04/2024
April 29th, 2024 UNINTERRUPTED AND TRIBECA ENTERPRISES PARTNER FOR SECOND-ANNUA...
29/04/2024
Rebrand and refresh: SailGP talks bringing its graphics operations inhouse for a...
29/04/2024
Reflecting on a Storied Career: Sean McManus Looks Back While Keeping an Eye on ...
29/04/2024
Drones Take Flight Inside MSG: How Sky Candy Studios is Upping the Excitement fo...
29/04/2024
Back to All News
Netflix Announces a Diverse Lineup of Polish Titles to Debut i...
29/04/2024
Tonight on Smoke and Mirrors: Fanyana feels embarrassed about his sexual mishapDon't miss Monday, 29 April's riveting episode of South African soapie Sm...
29/04/2024
Talk about commitment. When startup SEA.AI, an NVIDIA Metropolis partner, set out to create a system that would use AI to scan the seas to enhance maritime safe...
28/04/2024
Mediahaus delivers the first SRT live-streaming sports production over 5G with U...
27/04/2024
On April 26, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher E. Kubasik joined CNBC's Mor...
27/04/2024
PORTLAND, Oregon Audinate Group Limited, the developer of the Dante AV-over-IP solution, announced significant new additions to Dante Connect, its cloud-based D...
27/04/2024
TORONTO Bell Media has launched 10 English and French-language FAST channels featuring entertainment, factual, news, and sports programming. The new free stream...
27/04/2024
An extensive new analysis of the news segments in the broadcast evening news programs of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS has found that broadcasters devoted most of their...
27/04/2024
GERMANTOWN, Md. EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems has opened a new manufacturing facility and private 5G incubation center in Germantown, Maryland....
27/04/2024
Harry Pappas, one of three brothers who founded Pappas Telecasting Companies in 1971, died April 24. He was 78 years old....
27/04/2024
ATLANTA and LONDON Mexican telecommunications and broadcast company Televisa has selected Synamedia for an overhaul of its broadcast distribution....
27/04/2024
Participate in the Survey - The Impact of AI on Media and the Creative Industry
Pascal Wagner April 26, 2024
0 Comments
By participating in this surve...
27/04/2024
SDVI Rally Access Workstation Earns Two Top Awards at 2024 NAB Show
Brie Clayton April 26, 2024
0 Comments
SDVI, the leading platform provider for clo...
27/04/2024
Berklee's Music and Health Institute Launches Community Health Musician Cert...
27/04/2024
Charter Communications reported higher first-quarter profits despite continued cord-cutting and competition for broadband customers....
Back to All News
