Throwback Thursdays don’t get much better than this.
Complex, by way of DJ Eclipse, got a hold of some footage of a 19-year-old Kanye West rapping at the 1996 grand opening of a new location of legendary New York City record store Fat Beats.
Looking a little younger and thinner — naturally — Yeezy showed promise and glimpses of what was to come. “Tryna flex the technique, you get blasted with a TEC/ That sh– is mad ironic like Alanis Morissette,” he rapped.
Check out a description of that memorable day from Eclipse, who was the store’s general manager:
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.
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