Consequence says that Netflix’s jeen-yuhs missed out on covering Kanye West’s early mixtape days when the legendary rapper honed his skills. West’s longtime collaborator discussed the documentary during a recent interview with AllHipHop.
“There’s always gonna be a narrative arc, where there’s a start, a beginning, a climax to build a story because television works on that, from that aspect,” he explained. “But I think there were certain turning points that I would have loved to see just a tad bit of. Obviously, when you see episode 1, you see also when Kanye’s playing ‘All Falls Down’ for Chaka Pilgrim and it seems as though there’s no real feedback. You can’t go from that to all the sudden, ‘Tada, I’m on MTV now.’ That’s a process, and a big part of that was the mixtapes that we began to do.”
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Consequence explained that West’s mixtapes were a “pivotal part of turning a no to a yes,” and that mixtapes in general at the time worked similar to a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. West released several mixtapes in the early 2000s, such as Get Well Soon and Freshman Adjustment, before becoming one of the biggest artists in the world.
“It was a currency within itself,” Cons said. “The value that it gave you if you was hungry would exponentially increase any record deal you were gonna get anyway. When he’s playing ‘All Falls Down,’ he’s already at the label as a platinum producer, he did ‘H to the Izzo.’ What you gotta understand, especially in New York, it’s the top and the bottom. So yeah, you could have the swag straight, but if your bars ain’t straight, n—as ain’t respecting you.”
Check out Consequence’s full thoughts below.
[Via]