“And I still won't grow up, I'm a grown-ass kid/ Swear I should be locked up for stupid shit that I did”
- Kanye West, “Through the Wire”
Love him or hate him, or maybe somewhere in between, one thing is for certain — Kanye West (who legally changed his name to Ye in 2021) demands your attention. For almost three decades, he’s shared his thoughts through music, impassioned speeches, run-ins with the paparazzi and social media, but jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy is the most in-depth glimpse into the labyrinth that is his mind. Directed by Clarence “Coodie” Simmons and Chike Ozah, the three-part documentary series is an intimate examination of one of the world’s most enigmatic public figures, chronicling Ye’s rise as a producer, rapper and controversial megastar. Taking inspiration from Hoop Dreams, jeen-yuhs begins in 1998 with a baby-faced Ye posted up at Jermaine Dupri’s birthday party, follows him as he creates his breakout 2004 debut The College Dropout and comes to a close in 2020 as West, now sporting a salt-and-pepper goatee, is in the midst of his contentious presidential run.
jeen-yuhs is an empathetic portrait of the artist as a young man. We see West as an underdog fighting against being pigeonholed as a producer and triumphing once he signs a recording contract as a rapper. His close relationship with his mother, the late Donda West, is tender and sweet. There’s a lot going on in this series, but there’s one thing we couldn’t stop thinking about — his damn retainer.
The little pink dental aligner makes enough appearances throughout the series that it deserves a spot in the end credits. Frequently, West is heard speaking with minor difficulty and a bit of a lisp as the retainer is fixed to the roof of his mouth. It’s quite endearing. Sometimes, he takes the retainer out of his mouth and puts it down on whatever is in front of him, like a stack of Memorex CDs while he’s recording “All Falls Down.” In one scene, while West is in the studio with Scarface, he nonchalantly plucks the retainer out of his mouth and puts it on a table, leaving the Houston rapper understandably bewildered. Ye even throws it in his pocket. We doubt any orthodontist would recommend these practices.
Perhaps a young Ye had a… looser approach to hygiene. Even so, the presence of the retainer informs us of something deeper about the artist. When we think of retainers, images of awkward teenagers suffering from acne and smelling of teen spirit come to mind. Obviously, adults can have retainers after a stint with braces, just like Ye did, but it remains one of the most salient tokens of adolescence. Because of this, his retainer becomes the perfect symbol of his childlike spirit.
This pops up in Ye’s music more than once. In “Power,” he raps: “My childlike creativity, purity, and honesty/ Is honestly being crowded by these grown thoughts.” The years when a person typically sports a retainer are special, even if popping out that saliva-covered gadget can kill the romance of a first kiss. These years are also when you start to blossom, when you begin to find your voice and who you’re meant to be. Like the prototypical teenager, West is an argumentative, emotional, impulsive, risk-taking thrill-seeker. You could say he’s all of the above because he’s a Gemini, but in the context of jeen-yuhs, Ye’s retainer speaks volumes. He treats it with abandon — emblematic of his mercurial instincts.
It’s not just Ye’s retainer that conjures the essence of childhood. In jeen-yuhs, we see particular mannerisms and quirks that convey a boyish charm. When he laughs, he does so with an air of bashfulness, averting eye contact like he’s not quite sure of himself. It stands in contrast to his patented arrogance. Is this a coping mechanism or a glimpse into the real Ye? In one scene, Ye rides around his apartment on a scooter, and his friends open his refrigerator door revealing nearly empty shelves and a bowl of peas in a Ziploc bag. When Dating Twitter talks about red flags in a potential partner, Ye’s fridge situation is high up on the list.
It’s safe to assume that, these days, Ye no longer keeps a horror show of a fridge in his home, and we know he’s replaced the retainer for a permanent diamond grill, but he still has that shy laugh. Ye’s childlike demeanor has proven itself to be a gift and a curse, and it’s shaped the mind of an audacious creative.
That audacity has turned him into a unique brand of hip-hop star we hadn’t quite seen before — he not only steps outside of the box but builds his own. It called him to experiment with fashion in ways that act as visual aids for each album cycle and sets trends along the way: double pink polos with popped collars, shutter shades, that Céline blouse, leather kilts and joggers, those Maison Margiela face masks, his monochromatic Yeezy line. He had the audacity to make a music video based on Akira and to direct his own arthouse film, Runaway, as a companion piece to his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It drove him to enlist Jon Brion, one of the hottest film composers at the time, to co-produce his critically acclaimed 2005 album Late Registration. Yet, his childlike essence also makes him impulsive, volcanic and even sometimes dangerous.
jeen-yuhs is essentially an origin story of a wide-eyed young man with infinite dreams who becomes a billionaire titan and one of the most complicated superstars in music history. At times, it’s hard to watch because so much has changed since Ye was making “five beats a day for three summers,” but it’s also fascinating. Here he is recording music that would forever alter the course of hip-hop... with a retainer in his mouth. The retainer becomes a motif, functioning as a window into his inner child, to the person he once was and maybe still is, even if it’s hidden deep inside. When adults lose the connection to their inner child, it can turn them into dull people. You can call Ye a lot of things (some of those things might not pass a TV network’s standards and practices department), but you can never call the man boring. You can, however, call him a genius. Bet he’d love that.
