Jeen-Yuh’s Directors Kept 330 Hours Of Kanye West Footage In Shoeboxes For Years

Kanye West dropped the first part of his highly anticipated three-part Jeen-Yuh documentary on Netflix on February 16. The Filmmakers of said documentary have been filming Ye for most of his life since he started in the music scene.

Filmmakers Coodie and Chike recently spoke to Insider about the creation of the film. It is known that the two directors have about 330 hours of filmed footage of Ye’s life. The documentary itself focuses on the pre-fame, struggle-laden early stages of Mr. West’s career, at least the first part of it did. Coodie revealed that he stored all the recordings in shoe boxes.

“in a bunch of shoe boxes and a big duffel bag.

“I had a bunch of shoeboxes layered with tapes and a bag that I just carried around, throwing it in my closet, you know,” 

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“Now I got it organized and safe in storage.”

Both the filmmakers were inspired by a 1994 documentary, “Hoop Dreams,” and had decided to conclude theirs in the early 2000s when Kanye won Grammy for the best rap album “The College Dropout.” However, Kanye had told the filmmakers that he wasn’t ready for the world to see who he was behind the music and awards.

This led the filmmakers Clarence “Coodie” Simmons and Chike Ozah to continue recording Ye’s life. The two directors had insisted on giving fans an honest portrait of Ye’s late mother, Donda West.

Man, there was so much left on the cutting room floor because we didn’t even digitize all the tapes that I’ve captured. There were 330 mini DBS tapes that said Kanye or KW on them that we digitized. But I still have like 4- or 500 more tapes with like Pitbull, or John Legend, or J. Ivy, or Tekitha.

And then there’s also stuff that we had to cut out because when you’re making a movie, everything adds up to the movie. So, for example, when it came to editing a scene we had with John Singleton, I was trying to figure out how we could include that scene just to show how amazing John was and how he just embraced me and Kanye and he ain’t know either one of us. He just knew Kanye’s beats. And it was a hilarious scene, but when it comes to the story you have to move it forward.

All of the stuff that’s happened in this project has truly been ordained. We always say God directs our videos and we definitely feel that energy and he puts us in these positions to tell these amazing stories.

Ye declared his objections. hours before the documentary debuted as part of the Sundance Film Festival back in January, The rapper demanded that Netflix must grant him access to the editing room so that he could be “in charge of my own image.” Coodie and Chike denied Ye’s request.