I watched Netflix's long-awaited Kanye West documentary 'Jeen-Yuhs' and it's an epic about a fallen legend

• "Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy" is currently streaming on Netflix.
• The three-part documentary follows Ye through 21 years of his career.

Hours before Netflix's highly anticipated documentary "Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy" debuted as part of the virtual 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Ye — the artist formerly known as Kanye West, who is the subject of this docuseries — declared his objections.

The rapper, producer, and fashion designer demanded, via Instagram, that Netflix grant him access to the editing room so that he could be "in charge of my own image."

The three-part docuseries — which is now available to stream on Netflix — was pieced together by co-directors Clarence "Coodie" Simmons and Chike Ozah from over 300 hours of footage dating back to the late 1990s when the two directors — inspired by the 1994 documentary "Hoop Dreams" that follows the lives of Chicago high school students hoping to become professional basketball players — decided to quit their jobs and follow an up-and-coming Ye with a video camera to see how far his talents could take him.

In April 2021, Billboard reported that Netflix acquired "Jeen-Yuhs" in a massive deal worth $30 million. So what shocking secrets do the documentary spill about the life and career of Ye that got Netflix to splash the cash and the rapper to voice his concerns?

'Jeen-Yuhs' offers little new information about Ye or his career

The short answer is not a lot.

The first episode of "Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye trilogy" opens in 2020 in the Dominican Republic and Ye is in the middle of a recording session for his boring, over-stuffed 2021 album "Donda." As Ye freestyles furiously over a beat, attempting to conjure up a verse, the documentary jumps back in time to 1998, the start of the rapper's career and the making of his first album "The College Dropout."

At the time, Ye is a 21-year-old music producer from Chicago with aspirations of becoming a rapper. And despite earning buzz around the country for his soul-infused production that shaped the sound of Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records — the most popular music label in the world at the time — no one in the music industry is willing to take Ye seriously as a rapper and hand him a recording contract.

At one point during the first episode, Ye and his associates enter the offices of Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records in a move that was described as "bum-rushing" by Coodie — who also acts as the film's narrator — and he travels throughout the office building playing an early version of his 2004 single "All Falls Down" for staff. Ye also performs the song live for the staff in the building.

Throughout these moments, you can see a burning, transcendent spirit in Ye's eyes. He carries some kind of spiritual force best described by the late-great Greg Tate as "the sense that something other than or even more than human is speaking through whatever fragile mortal vessel is burdened with repping for the divine, the magical, the supernatural, the ancestral."

This presence is no longer visible in Ye's work today, but it is unmistakable in the first episode of "Jeen-Yuhs." And at certain points, the documentary can be a frustrating watch. Why won't anyone give Ye a break? Why won't anyone take chance on his clear talent? Well, Coodie and Ozah make the case — per the title of the documentary — that Ye is simply a visionary. A genius who could see what others could not and it is through this narrative that the rest of the documentary flows uncritically.

The most interesting moments in 'Jeen-Yuhs' are the scenes between Ye and his late mother Donda West

By covering over two decades of Ye's life with extended focus placed on his struggle-laden pre-fame era, "Jeen-Yuhs" does, of course, offer some insight into the artist we know today. Through Ye's struggle to land a record deal, for instance, one can start to make sense of the brash and bold bravado that he has adopted.

The documentary even offers up several prophetic moments, during which Ye announces, with frightening specificity, events and goals that he will achieve later in his career. One, for example, is his recent name change. Late in episode one, West jokes to Coodie that he will one day only go by the name "Ye" after a promoter messes up his name on a call list.

The most affecting moments in "Jeen-Yuhs," however, are between Ye and his mother Donda West who died in 2007 from heart failure following complications from cosmetic surgery. At the tail end of the first episode, Ye returns to his mother's home in Chicago. The pair discuss Ye's childhood and his current success as a music producer when Donda halts and offers her son some advice on how to remain a hungry but humble genius.

"A giant looks in the mirror and sees nothing," Donda tells Ye. "Stay on the ground, but you can be in the air at the same time."

It is only in Donda's presence that Ye appears to hang up his intense bravado, but before we can peak too far into a vulnerable, unfamiliar side of Ye, Coodie and Ozah pull away. Within minutes we are back in their churning narrative of Ye's inexorable rise, which is the documentary's most successful form. For Ye's undying fans, this will act as a sufficient hit of dopamine. For others, "Jeen-Yuhs" will act as a mildly enjoyable glimpse into the life of a once-talented, once-inspiring rapper from Chicago that we used to love.

Grade: B+

"Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy" is streaming now on Netflix.