Years before Kanye West became the world’s most narcissistic superstar with 21 Grammys under his belt, he was well on his way to shaming the competition – even at 19 years old. A recently surfaced video from August of 1996 (via Complex) shows the young rapper onstage at a Fat Beats record shop in New York. Taking his turn on the mic, viewers will hear his signature “Haa!” before he lays out an impressive verse for an amateur kid from Chicago.
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“My style is too cold / Always forever like Luther / But it ain’t original because I stole it from the future,” raps the future living legend.
Kanye also calls out miss Jagged Little Pill with the line “that shit is not ironic like Alanis Morissette.”
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The owner of the now-defunct Fat Beats and subsequent Sirius XM radio host for “Rap Is Outta Control,” DJ Eclipse, reached out to Complex with the footage, with accompanying comments:
“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.”
