Remember Kanye Rapping At 19? Here’s The Extended Version (Video)

DJ Eclipse recently took some old VHS footage of Kanye West rapping at the young age of 19 and reformatted it for the entire world wide web to see.

Now we can revisit the grand opening of Fat Beats and pay respect to its 20 year anniversary once again as Eclipse has graced the globe with an extended version of a young West exchanging even more bars alongside Al Tariq of the Beatnuts, Butter Lee from Rawcotiks, and Black Attack.

Eclipse also provides some great context behind the video and the moves of a young Kanye West on his path to “make it” that includes his connections between the artists featured in the video as well as No I.D., Grav, Common, and Relativity Records.

“Al Tariq from the Beatnuts came through that day and brought some of his people with him. His people being Butter Lee from Rawcotiks, Black Attack and Kanye West. Both Rawcotiks and Black Attack were featured on Tariq’s “God Connections” album which came out on Correct Records in ’96. Another artist that was on Correct Records was Grav who was from Chicago and put out an album called “Down To Earth” (also in ’96). Not only was Tariq featured on that album as well, but it would also feature the first appearance of Kanye West on the mic on a song called “Line For Line” (which he also produced along with half the album). In addition to that connection, Kanye was a student of No I.D. & Dug Infinite who were producers that had been working with Common (Sense). Common was signed to Relativity Records as was the Beatnuts. So when Kanye started making trips to New York to “make it” in the music biz one of his first stops was at Relativity Records. There was a person who worked at Relativity named Peter Kang who was heavily involved with the Beatnuts and also took an early interest in Kanye West and started managing him. So whenever he would have the Beatnuts out and about he would bring around Kanye. And that’s how Kanye ended up at Fat Beats that day. Happy 20th anniversary Fat Beats!”

Related: Kanye West Performing in 1996 (Video)