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Here’s Some Unreleased Footage Of Kanye West Rapping In 1996

Posted on July 17th, 2014
by
Staff Editor

kanye

Before he became the multi-platinum selling super star that he is today, Kanye West was just like the rest of you upcoming artists out there who had to hustle his way to the top. Thanks to DJ Eclipse, the former general manager of Fat Beats’ New York store, we have some never-before seen footage of a 19-year old Kanye West freestyling during the grand opening of the Fat Beats store in New York in 1996. Here’s what Eclipse had to say:

“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.”

Take a look at this unreleased footage on the following page. Ye was spitting some fire back then!

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