Kanye West is one of the icons of modern music, but before he made found international fame with the release of his debut album College Dropout in 2003, he spent years trying to prove to the world that he was an elite rapper.

Part of his rise to stardom was making regular trips from Chicago to New York to rap at the Fat Beats record store on 6th Avenue, a haven for underground hop hop talent.

A video of 19-year-old West performing at Fat Beats in 1996 has emerged online, posted by DJ Eclipse, once the store’s manager.

DJ Eclipse described the video, saying:

“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.”