Coodie captures the tensions of Ye’s early years, keeping close as the rapper received an onslaught of slights and indignities. We see him bouncing through the Roc-A-Fella offices, playing “All Falls Down” to bored secretaries and seasoned A&R representatives and pretty much anyone who will listen. At best, Ye is received as a nuisance and at worst, a joke. We watch as he is repeatedly denied a record deal while still being buttered up just enough to keep making beats for Roc-A-Fella rappers, after the incredible success of the Ye-produced “Izzo” by Jay-Z, which became the rapper’s first top 10 single.
The Roc-A-Fella roster seem to treat Ye the way teenagers treat the annoying friend who has a car. He is an outsider, but he is useful. Multiple rappers are puzzled as to the presence of Coodie and his camera — they see him as a nobody, undeserving of such attention — but push past their confusion to ask him for yet another beat. Meanwhile, he tells everyone who will listen, “That camera is for a documentary on me.” He is thrilled to use the presence of Coodie’s camera as a legitimating force.
Jeen-Yuhs also offers a treasure trove of little wins for a Ye who needed them. In a sequence that will make you cry, he returns to his mother’s apartment in Chicago and she flawlessly recites one of his high school talent show verses. In another, you find yourself rooting for him as he talks his way into a feature on a Jay-Z song. And in the second episode, we’re treated to a spectacular moment as Pharrell listens to “Through the Wire” for the first time and is astonished at the genius.
Still, Jeen-Yuhs offers relatively little commentary on its subject. Coodie is content to be in Ye’s presence, falling silent for long stretches of time. When Coodie speaks, he rarely argues with the star or even asks provocative questions. As a result, the doc feels out of step with how we normally receive Ye — either challenged in interviews or hell-bent on spinning his own narrative. In Coodie’s footage, he is free to be himself, to inhabit a range of postures. He is fallible and frustrated, vulnerable and victorious, cunning and confused. While this is thrilling to watch, it’s ultimately to the detriment of the documentary. Jeen-Yuhs is frequently uninterested in taking a perspective, much less passing a judgment on its mercurial subject.
But in abandoning the project of explaining Ye’s contentious legacy, it transforms into something else: a lament for a severed tie. Coodie seems to know that he’s too close to the subject, which is perhaps why the documentary works best as a story of a fraying friendship between the two men.
Though the first two parts provide a thorough documentation of Ye’s rise, the third part opens with a time jump. It’s not long, but it’s jarring. We watch Coodie and his camera transform from playing a central role in Ye’s life, to the 2006 Grammy afterparty, when a drunk Ye appears to forget Coodie’s name multiple times. It’s painful to watch Coodie’s face here as he acknowledges the change in proximity to the star.
From that point, the distance only grows. There’s a check-in here or there, but mostly the pair of them drift apart. As Coodie gradually loses access to Ye, he begins to rely on news clips and fan footage on YouTube, and the distance becomes the juxtaposition; clips of Ye pushing back against the idea that he needs to time off to grieve his mother are set against the tender footage Coodie captures of him and Donda being each other’s world. video of Ye alone in the aftermath of the Taylor Swift debacle is contrasted with the early days of his career, when he always had a roomful of people to lean on.