"Just some rockstar s***": Act three of jeen-yuhs shows Ye's rise and fall
Los Gatos, California - The third and final installment of Netflix's jeen-yuhs perfectly showcases the pivotal moments in Kanye West's career and personal life that led him to the here and now.
Act three of jeen-yuhs starts with various interview snippets featuring Ye addressing his arrogance, setting the tone for a jam-packed final installment of the three-part documentary.
"I heard that you were really arrogant," Oprah Winfrey said to Ye in one clip, to which he responded, "I heard that, too."
Aside from his arrogance and unrelenting overconfidence, act three also focused on Ye's relationship with his late mother, Donda West, and the impact that her passing in 2007 had on Ye.
If it wasn't clear in acts one and two, the light that Donda brought into the 44-year-old rapper's life was put on full display in act three.
Even Coodie, one of the filmmakers who narrated the three-part documentary, made note of her influence and the immense amount of love between the mother and son duo.
"It was like the bigger he got, the more he wanted her around," Coodie said.
Despite all the touching moments and the evident artistry that went into jeen-yuhs, act three just didn't hit the same way the first two did.
Whether that's due to lack of detail, lack of footage, or lack of ability to deep-dive into Ye's personal life, it didn't stop Coodie from grazing over the controversial moments of his life.
Controversy at its finest
As Coodie so eloquently said, it was very evident how much influence Donda and her words had on Ye from the jump.
Though he was egocentric from day one of his music career, Donda kept him grounded in a way no one else ever could – even to this day.
When she passed, it took a toll on Ye, with Coodie noting he wasn't the same guy he had come to know.
There's a fine line between being overconfident in yourself, and ruining someone else's day.
Moments from Ye's controversial past were on full display in act three, such as his infamous and uncalled-for on-stage appearance at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
For those who don't remember, Ye bolted on stage during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech and snatched the mic to proclaim "Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time," and thus should've won the award instead of Swift.
Then, there was his marriage to Kim Kardashian in 2014, which seems to be dead and gone since Kim was declared legally single on Wednesday.
Ye's personal life takes center stage
Two years into the marriage, Kim was robbed in Paris while Ye was playing one of his Saint Pablo tour shows. This led him to call the show mid-set to tend to his traumatized wife.
One month after the robbery and following a slew of off-the-cuff on-stage tangents, Ye was hospitalized after his doctor called 9-1-1, citing the rapper was having a psychotic episode.
What the doc fails to say, and likely on purpose, is that during his psychiatric hold, Ye was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and medicated to help cope with manic episodes.
The doc alludes to this reality, but never quite comes out and says it as fact, making it rather questionable whether Ye was actually included in the editing of the film after all.
In 2018, Ye started a media frenzy after he wore a "Make America Great Again" hat during a performance on Saturday Night Live.
Then there was 2020, when Ye decided to run for president and held a rally where he spoke out about slavery being a choice, Kim wanting to abort their first child, and a slew of other topics that gravely concerned his dad.
Though these subjects were mentioned, the filmmakers didn't dive into the nitty-gritty of them, leaving viewers asking more questions than they showed up with.
Given the lack of depth or detail around the jarring events that transpired in Ye's professional and personal life between 2007 and 2021, stacking them all into one act likely wasn't the move.
Missing key pieces to the story
Given how detail-oriented the first two acts of jeen-yuhs were and how little time was covered in each, it's mind-boggling that Coodie & Chike would deviate from the course in act three.
When you see three years covered in the first act, and three in the second, it just doesn't make sense to cover 14 years in its final installment.
Providing intricate details the people wanted in the first two acts regarding the process of a musical mastermind, yet failing to do the same regarding his outlandish antics and actions over the last 14 years felt like a move a filmmaker would make to protect his friend.
Given that Coodie and Ye's relationship goes back to the '90s, it's plausible that the filmmaker made the conscious decision to not highlight the backstories of the rapper's controversial actions that have dominated headlines for over a decade.
Still, this is what people watch documentaries to find out.
As a filmmaker, you have to be able to put personal relationships aside to tell the full truth, not just a version that the subject agrees with.
Though jeen-yuhs surely did its job in humanizing the man formerly known as Kanye West, it still failed to provide answers for the numerous questions plaguing his personal and professional image.
Just because his die-hard fans can overlook his actions and separate his personal life from his artistic ingenuity, doesn't mean the rest of the world can.
Then again, this is Yeezy we're talking about, and public opinion doesn't seem to phase him much.
After all, you can't be an innovator and simultaneously care about what the world thinks.
Cover photo: Collage: IMAGO/MediaPunch