Before He Was A Rap Superstar: VIDEO Of A Teenage Kanye West Is Posted On YouTube

Long before there was Yeezus and the Kardashians, Kanye West was just a 19-year-old kid with a dream, albeit an insanely talented kid as a video that has surfaced on YouTube shows.

The year was 1996. The place - Fat Beats Records on 6th Avenue in New York, a record store and center for underground talent. West flew from Chicago to New York City to show off his skills at Fat Beats' grand reopening when they moved to a new location.

In the video, Kanye freestyles in front of captivated onlookers for a little more than a minute.

Ex-Fat Beats employee DJ Eclipse (the store closed in 2010) saved the video for posterity. He gave the backstory to Complex in an email:

"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...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."

At the time of this video, Kanye was a recent high school graduate about to start painting classes at the The American Academy of Art. We're sure glad he decided on a different path:

Check out the early days and raw talents of the young genius below: