Kanye West’s come-up was not overnight. It’s been a 20-year journey for the Chicago MC.
If you want to know what we’re talking about, then you have to check out this video from 1996 of a 19-year-old Kanye West rapping. The video is from the opening of Fat Beats’ 6th Avenue store.
DJ Eclipse was the general manager of the now-closed Fat Beats’ New York store. He was the one that put up the video. He also shot Complex an email explaining what was going on:
“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.”
Who would have guessed Kanye would be the force he is now? Check out the #FlashbackFriday video above.
SOURCE: Complex
