A newly surfaced VHS clip captures ‘Ye in his backpack years.

Long before there was Yeezus, there was a College Dropout, and even before that there was Kanye West, a producer-turned-rapper beginning a decade-long cycle of reinvention now envied by Madonna herself.

As spotted by Noisey, this clip was filmed in 2003 at the 2nd Annual Dynamic Producer Conference (in Los Angeles, we believe) and sees Kanye performing the original version of ‘Gold Digger’ a year before the track appeared on his debut album.

Backed by recent Oscar winner John Legend on piano, he leads the audience in a bit of call-and-response and raps the early version of the verse, which sees the titular character killed off by her baby daddy: “He killed that bitch, they gave him 25 years”.

Kanye’s new album So Help Me God is about to drop any day now – he premiered the Steve McQueen-directed video for ‘All Day’ earlier this week.