Part II of Kanye West’s Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy documentary, entitled ‘Purpose’, chronicles the ascent of the artiste through his debut album, The College Dropout.

His best selling album to date, it debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, charted for 96 weeks, received the most Grammy nominations in 2005 (10) and is now certified triple platinum.

If you are yet to view Part II, which also takes a deeper look at the fashion and music mogul’s process in the studio, a SPOILER ALERT is in effect.

West, even as a child was spitting lyrics

In the opening scene of the documentary, we are introduced to a 13-year-old West who approaches the camera and immediately begins rapping quite impressively for his age.

Seeming to be at a family gathering, West is introduced by a younger boy, who says, “Me-Maw, Big idea right here.” Thereafter, Kanye confidently starts his rap, and although loud enough for others in the room to hear, it draws no attention, which suggests, that it could have been a regular occurrence.

As he finishes his rhymes, the lady capturing the video excitedly laughs and encourages the young rapper to ‘get out there.’

See some of the lyrics below:

Wassup in effect
and its time to select
the mind of Kanye is the place to be
Can’t you see its me
and I’m freshly…
And yo
I’m pursuing the rap art fo’ sure
And I’m starting the rhyme to finish
I will diminish other artistes on the top 10
I’ll bump them…
I’m def and I’m fresh and I am the best
Nothing less can come from West

Even after being signed the record label was still ‘sleeping on him’

West experienced a rather difficult time creating his debut album. The record label, seeing him as a producer first, continued to request beats from him. A newly signed rapper, Peedi Crakk, even got priority over West. The God Breathed rapper was then asked to travel to Los Angeles to create beats for Crakk, putting his career on hold.

After his tragic accident, the star experienced even more neglect from Rock-A-Fella. Speaking at his release party for the Through The Wire music video, West addressed some of the issues he had experienced over the past year.

“I don’t know if you know this, but my album keeps on getting pushed back and I don’t know if you know this but my marketing budget is not open. I don’t know if you know this, but they actually haven’t even paid for me to even have the black and white shot that people get when they originally get signed, which I got signed a year ago.”

He continued: “I don’t know if you know that the reason that I made tracks at this point, is to have enough money to pay for my t-shirts, is to have enough money to pay for my mixtapes.”

In addition to this, West had to borrow studio time from other rappers such as Pharrell Williams just so he could record his songs. Scenes from the documentary also showed West recording in Jamie Foxx’s studio.

With the release of his self-paid Through The Wire video, Rock-A-Fella co-founder, Dame Dash gained a new perspective on his character, going as far as to admit that was not taking West seriously.

“And introducing next artiste, I have a little story…I wanna let y’all know where I’m coming from and how we feel about this man at The Rock (Rock-A-Fella),” Dash said.

“When he used to come and make his beats he used to be like ‘Yo, I rap.’ And I’m not gon’ lie, I never really paid it too much attention. I was like ‘alright’ you know, ‘stick to the beats kid’. What I thought, was that he was gonna make an album and put a bunch a guests on it,” Dame said.

He went on to laud West for his originality and his ability to control his own destiny.

Kanye West did not do the surgery he needed so he could continue his career

After finally signing to Rock-A-Fella Records as a rapper, the first thing West wanted to do was focus on making his album, which we now know today as The College Dropout.

However, with the record label continuing to push for him to make beats, he was not allowed the opportunities he needed, describing the process of making beats an internship.

“I love doin’ beats. I ain’t frontin’ on the beats but that was like an internship for me. I’m a rapper, you know what I’m saying. Put me in the ranks of a rapper,” West said.

While in Los Angeles, working on some beats for Peedi Crakk, West had an experience that changed the trajectory of his life. En route to his hotel, following a late-night session, he was involved in a car accident, breaking three different sections of his jaw. The near-fatal accident, however, was like an angel in disguise, and seems to be what he needed to get to where he is today.

This setback caused the label to neglect his rapping career even more, but he continued to pursue the making of his album whenever he could.

Five months into the accident, West’s dentist advised him of the surgery he needed for his jaw. However, it would put him ‘out of pocket’ for too long. In an effort to push through with his plans for The College Dropout, West opted not to get the surgery.

‘Closed mouths don’t get fed’: Kanye’s verse on Jay-Z’s ‘The Bounce’ happened by chance

Some time after being signed to the Rock-A-Fella label, both West and his videographer, Coodie, came to realise that his dreams were still being placed on the backburner.

West is a man who not only acts on but creates opportunities for himself, and on one particular day while Jay-Z was working on The Bounce for his The Blueprint 2 album, West asked if he could rap a verse, with the hopes of being featured on the album. He figured that if he could impress the co-founder of the company, that would be more than enough to get him where he desired to be.

As West confidently rapped his lyrics to the instrumental of The Bounce, we see that those in the room, especially Jay-Z were quite impressed with his abilities. And right there and then, just like that, he was asked to record the verse for the album.

“Closed mouths don’t get fed. You wouldn’t have said nothing, you wouldn’t have been on that …,” Jay-Z said after West finished recording.

Kanye funded his first music video ‘Through the Wire’, even after being signed

West seeing that his place on the backburner was one of permanence, realised that he would need to take matters into his own hands if he ever wanted to create his album and figured the best way to put himself out there was with the release of a music video. The song of choice was Through The Wire.

The Through the Wire title comes from the fact that Kanye recorded the original version while his mouth was still wired shut after his accident. West and Coodie came up with a rather unique vision for the video, which basically consisted of not only images of his accident and notable achievements, but also videos of the reactions of friends upon first hearing the song.

As per usual, Coodie would ensure the film was rolling prior to West playing on the song, to catch listeners’ reaction. During the documentary, we see an extended version of the reactions of both Pharrell Williams and DeRay.

With the Through The Wire music video almost completed, Chike, another director on the Jeen-yuhs documentary, for months got Kanye and his team into MTV after hours so they could utilise the equipment there to finish it.

At the release party for the video, which took place a year after he was signed, West spoke to an unexpected crowd of over 200 people, including co-founder Dame Dash, where he highlighted many of the issues he was experiencing with his label, including the fact that he didn’t receive a budget, forcing him to fund the music video himself.

“This video cost me, me, US$33,000 that I paid for out of pocket. It started off by they told me we could do it for US$8,000. We put this together to get the buzz going so they could give me a release date, you know what I mean,” West shared.