Victor Yerrid (puppeteer): The puppet world is very small, so they contacted me about putting together the puppet team for that. And because it was a similar lip-sync show, I brought in a lot of the same guys we had used for Crank Yankers.

Alice Dinnean (puppeteer): There was a phase where all of us wound up on a lot of adult-themed puppet shows in the mid-2000s. That's when you had Crank Yankers and Team America: World Police, and Jimmy Kimmel would have puppets on his show. It was a thing for a little while.

Kellison: For a long time, it was like Untitled Kanye West Puppet Show. We had a real hard time coming up with the name. Finally, Kanye goes, "I want to call the show Alligator Boots." When he was a kid growing up, if your uncle had a pair of alligator boots, that was sort of like you made it. That was what it was meant to be.

Konee Rok: It ended up going to Comedy Central, and I think they got a $1 million budget and shot it. It was a five-day shoot on the Jim Henson lot.

Jon Kimmel (head writer): Rhymefest was probably my very favorite part of doing the show. I would love to have him in every room I ever wrote in, because he's so funny and just a really smart guy.

Kanye getting ready for his stormtrooper close-up. Konee Rok

II. "The Baller-est Thing I'd Ever Seen in My Life"

While Rhymefest, along with Kimmel and Kellison, were the most instrumental in writing the pilot, West was deeply involved in the preproduction: Kellison says West would call him regularly, at all hours, with ideas about sketches and characters—he was especially interested in the look of the puppets.

Artie Esposito (puppeteer): The main character was Pork Troy, and he sort of played the Kermit role. There would be a guest star each week and stuff going on backstage, and what was going on onstage. And the hilarity ensued.

Tom Stern (director): It's not like Kanye had a ton of ideas about comedy, but the things that he did care about were more like what kinds of sunglasses and sneakers the puppets would wear.

Kellison: Puppet wardrobe is expensive to begin with. Normally what they do is buy Baby Gap clothes. And Kanye really cared a lot about what the puppets looked like, to the point where Carol Binion, who did a lot of that wardrobe, had to do tons of extra work to make those things look presentable.