Kanye West Photos & Video: Clip Shows 'Bound 2' Star Rapping During Teenage Years
A throwback footage of a 19-year-old Kanye West freestyle rapping, way before his stardom and success, surfaces online.
The Chicago-bred emcee had made a trip to New York City to perform at the 1996 grand opening of Fat Beats' 6th Avenue store. In the newly released video, the fresh-faced, thinner-looking Yeezy is seen taking the stage of the legendary record store and center for underground hip-hop talent, and dropping an impressive 90-second verse.
West, now 37 years old, demonstrates his lyrical prowess and rhyming skills, talking about his technique by referencing Canadian-American singer Alanis Morissette and her then-hit "Isn't It Ironic." "Tryna flex the technique, you get blasted with a TEC / That shit is mad ironic like Alanis Morissette," he raps.
"Rhymes for low fare / Flying out of O'Hare / While these no-name *ss n*ggas wanna go there," he continues his flow.
The "Yeezus" rapper then discusses living in Chi-Town and self-proclaims how he is from the future, copying his grandchildren's style. "It ain't original because I stole from the future," he spits in his signature style.
Kanye West was eight years away from releasing his highly acclaimed 2004 debut album "The College Dropout" and later becoming a hip-hop icon, and DJ Eclipse, the former manager of Fat Beats, explained to Complex magazine how the "New Slaves" rapper's brilliant freestyle video clip was rediscovered:
"The original location of Fat Beats launched on July 14, 1994 which means FB just turned 20 years old! Business was doing so well 2 years in that Joseph Abajian decided to move the store from it's small 9th St. basement space into a 2nd floor location on 6th Avenue. August 1996 (day?) was the grand opening of the 406 6th Avenue location. It was also the beginnings of our independent movement which had recently started bubbling about a year before.
"Yesterday I started converting old Hi8 video tapes to DVD and came across some interesting footage from that day. Now we had a lot of the usual suspects in the place that day such as ILL BILL, Arsonists, Lord Finesse, Adagio, Breeze Brewin, A.L. Skills, Percee P, J-Live, Mr. Live, Chino XL, Al Tariq, Black Attack, Xzibit, Shabaam Sahdeeq, Rawcotiks, Ak Skills, Rob Swift, Roc Raida, DJ Spinna and many, many more. But what took me by surprise was the appearance of this 19-year-old kid who at that time nobody knew. At least in NYC."
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