All Falls Down

“All Falls Down” is a self-reflection of Kanye’s personal battle with consumerism. The track was the third single from his debut album, The College Dropout. The song peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 47th Grammy Awards.

Kanye released an earlier version of this song as “Self Conscious (Poetry-Style)"on Freshmen Adjustment and performed a lesser-known spoken word version on “Def Poetry Jam” of this song also known as from Freshmen Adjustment

Kanye gets Syleena Johnson to interpolate Lauryn Hill’s line from “The Mystery of Iniquity”, the line being

When it all, it all falls down, I’m telling you all, it all falls down

The hook encourages people to think about what life would be like without material possessions, success, and all the external aspects of life that people lean on to sustain a sense of self worth. What will it feel like when it all falls down? Because one day it will.

From early references on Common’s “Southside” and his own “Homecoming” to later references on songs like “All Day,” he’s always shown love to the south side of Chicago.

When he says “We gon' set this party off right,” he wasn’t wrong. “All Falls Down” would go on to peak at #7 on Billboard’s Hot 100, serving as confirmation of the track’s mainstream success.

“This the real one” is likely a reference to this being the updated version of the original Lauryn Hill-sampling track.

Even though the first verse refers to a troubled woman, these lines also apply to Kanye himself. After all the album’s title is The College Dropout and despite the grandiosity, it’s clear from his body of work and public utterances that Kanye’s a self-conscious and self-reflective person.

In the second verse he turns the same “self-conscious” opening explicitly in on himself.

Even though getting a college degree won’t help her, she doesn’t want to drop out because she knows her parents will be disappointed.

Ye touched on this subject in a more sarcastic manner on his “Lil Jimmy Skit”:

I’m going to get super smart, so I, too, can die without money
But I’ll be the smartest dead guy!

While society paints a picture of going to college as a “secure” way to improve one’s future, the reality is that getting a higher education is not only rigorous—it’s costly and doesn’t always prepare you to pursue a fulfilling path.

Since her goal is to make money and going to school doesn’t seem like it will turn into a real job, she switched to her fallback: doing hair.

The “urr” pronunciation of “-ure” sounds is a reference to Chingy’s classic, “Right Thurr.”

She named her daughter “Alexis” so that she could still claim to own “a Lexus.” Kanye of course plays with the homophony of the two words.

In Donda West’s book, Raising Kanye, she notes that this line is both about a cousin of Kanye’s named Alexis, and the woman he was dating at the time, Alexis Phifer.

Long hair has always been associated with beauty. Since she has grown it out to the point that it looks fake (weave), it ultimately defeats the purpose of growing it out in the first place. In spite of her attempt at self-security, she cuts it all off.

It’s important to note that Eve intentionally chose to wear a short hairstyle to go against standard beauty norms for women.

Clever rhyme off the 1992 movie title Single White Female

The line ties up a verse that has been about a self-conscious woman trying to fill the void in her life – with a college education, a clever baby name, and materialism generally.

Via MTV:

Sway: Do you admit to being self-conscious?

West: How could you be in this situation with this amount of pressure and this many people looking at you, waiting for you to show them a magic Houdini trick or a David Blaine, waiting for you to not make it out of your chains when the casket goes into the water, and not be self-conscious? How could you not be scared when you step out on that stage? How can I not be scared on the second album? How could I not be scared when I dropped “Diamonds” and there’s people who say, “I don’t like ‘Diamonds’ ”?

Brooke Crittendon, who dated Kanye for 2 and a half years, described him as “insecure” and “vulnerable”.

“Ver-say-see” is a mispronounciation of the luxury brand Versace (pronounced vair-sah-chay). He’s making fun of the sort of person who wants to buy luxury items that they can’t pronounce for the sake of showing off.

Kanye seems to be imitating a line from Joe Ezterhas' movie Showgirls, where main character Nomi says “Thanks. It’s a Ver-sayce” after being complemented on her dress.

While “Ones” could be in reference to Nike’s Air Force 1, it’s most likely alluding to another Nike model: the Jordan 1. In an interview with Sway, Kanye claimed: “The Jordans are only popular at this point because of two people: me and Don C. Because Don C was ordering them vintage Jordans when the 4s used to break apart on the sole.”

Ye was also an avid wearer of throwback jerseys. Maybe he’s alluding to the Nolan Ryan jersey he wore in his “Through the Wire” video.

The American Dream is to be wealthy and successful, but the people that seem to achieve the dream are often left unfulfilled, perhaps because of the things they had to sacrifice to get there or the meaninglessness of an existence defined by the things you own.

Some innocent (pretty) people will do low (ugly) things to obtain fame and fortune. The line takes a portion of the chorus to “Real Niggas” by The Notorious B.I.G. (which was later used by Jay-Z for his own “Real Niggaz” and Nas on his song “N.I.G.G.E.R.”)

On the road to riches and diamond rings
Real niggas do real things

In the last few lines Kanye was referring to rich people, now he switches to African-Americans.

The best way to keep teeth “shinin'” is to floss, as your dentist would tell you. And if you don’t floss, your teeth will deteriorate.

“Flossing” can also mean exhibiting jewellery. Ye opines that African-Americans like to wear jewellery and show off money as a response to racism against them. Being flashy can help to heal a shattered self-esteem and it also sends a big “fuck you” to haters. The next verse expands on this theory in detail.

“40 acres and a mule” was the promise of compensation made to freed African American slaves after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, a lot of promises that the federal government had made to freed slaves were broken, so Kanye is saying that he has to be materialistic to get the socioeconomic benefits his ancestors were promised but never received

Just meant as “will stoop” – as in, we’ll do really bad things for money

Also a reference to “a stoop” – porch with stairs. Stereotype dictates that it is a hangout spot for poor people in urban areas. The “a” in front of the word stoop not only fills out the length of this line, making it fit rhythmically better with the next, but also pre-emphasizes the message of the next line – to society at large, per Kanye’s view, any rich black man will be stereotyped as just some drug dealer who spends his time hanging out on a stoop.

Even if a black person is successful in life and buys flashy things with the money they’ve earned, to the world at the end of the day to many they are just a “n**** in a coupe”.

Note the usage of “coupe.” On the surface level it refers to an expensive car, but doubles as “coop” continuing the interwoven themes of internalized racism, external racism, and materialism that lead to the line in the middle of the following verse:

“Cause they made us hate ourself and love they wealth”

Kanye references the N.W.A song “Fuck tha Police” to express his feelings about law enforcement.

This line disses the justice system, law enforcement, and the black American community.

“We buy our way out of jail” refers to the fact that a wealthy person is above the law in many ways since they can pay for very good legal defense to get them off the hook for most crimes.

“…but we can’t buy freedom” could be taken to mean that even outside of jail black people aren’t free from police harassment. However, the more significant interpretation is that black people aren’t free from themselves because they are too focused on materialism, an idea that Kanye introduced in the last verse and expands on in the rest of this one.

People often buy clothes and other items that are unnecessary and way too expensive. During the time this song was made, flexing jewelry and expensive watches were a common trend in hop hop and is still a continued practice today.

Kanye believes people do this to cover up their own insecurities and self-consciousness and to impress other people rather than make decisions they truly want to make themselves.

The crackhead buys crack from the drug dealer, then the drug dealer turns around and buys Jordans. The money in this economic food chain eventually ends up in the hands of a powerful white CEO who most likely doesn’t care about the detrimental effects of materialism.

The second bar was apparently a very controversial line for Kanye to spit, since “white man” is censored in the official music video.

While performing this song at Abbey Road, Kanye replaced ‘white man’ with ‘George Bush’.

Kanye accepts that he is also guilty of being materialistic—before he even had a house he went to the renowned Jacob the Jeweler to purchase the would-be famed Jesus piece.

In a 2004 Rolling Stone interview with Kanye, journalist Touré wrote:

But the center of today’s outfit is the Jesus piece West picked up yesterday from Jacob the Jeweler, perhaps the top custom-jewelry man in hip-hop. About the size of a grown man’s palm, it has a cluster of clear diamonds for the crown of thorns, a river of yellow and light-brown diamonds making up Jesus' blond hair, aquamarines for his blue eyes and little rubies for the tears of blood on his face. It’s an ornate rendering, a $25,000 piece, and he’s very proud of it. “This is so fabulous it could be in the Robb Report,” he says.

This lyric was recycled from an earlier Kanye track: “Wow,” which he discussed recycling on “Last Call.”

106 & Park was B.E.T.’s more commercial, pop-leaning rap show. Ye’s first appearance on the show came in the same month as “All Falls Down”’s release, performing “Slow Jamz” with Twista and Jamie Foxx.

Side note: MTV censored this line in their broadcast of this video, considering it to be ‘advertisement’

In an interview, Syleena Johnson explained this line:

It was 6 o’clock in the morning and [Kanye] needed clearance for the Lauryn Hill sample and she wouldn’t give it to him. And so, I came in to sing that hook for him and I ended up saving his deadline because he was going to have to push [back] his album if he hadn’t gotten it done.

Kanye rapped in “Through the Wire” about the safe belt saving his life.

The original version sampled vocals and guitar from Lauryn Hill’s “The Mystery of Iniquity,” before Kanye decided to have Syleena Johnson do the vocals.

In Billboard’s Kanye West’s ‘The College Dropout’: An Oral History, multiple collaborators unveiled the story behind the record:

‘All Falls Down’ was made on a fairly cheap Roland 18-track digital recorder and it wasn’t re-done in the studio. It was just put on the album. Things would be made in his apartment, and it’d sound amazing. A lot of times when then we’d do it in the studio it didn’t sound ‘good.’ So that first time would end up on the album. — Devo Springsteen

We were trying to get the sample cleared by Lauryn Hill, so Kanye and I flew to Miami and literally looked for Lauryn. We drove around Miami looking for Lauryn. I don’t know what we thought. That’s the kind of stuff that we were doing, we were so ‘by any means necessary.’ ‘Oh, she lives in Miami? We’ll just go find her.’ I don’t know who we thought we were or what we were doing. We bumped into Rohan [Marley], and ended up getting an email address but… (Sigh). — John Monopoly

We went as far as sending her a check to entice her to do it, but she didn’t do it. She didn’t actually write the record, so we were able to clear the words but not her. Syleena [Johnson] came in in the ninth inning and nailed it. — Shalik Berry