Songoftheday 10/10/24 - Man I promise she's so self-conscious, she has no idea what she doin' in college...

 

 

"All Falls Down" - Kanye West featuring Syleena Johnson

from the album College Dropout (2004)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 14

 

Today's song comes from rapper/singer/producer/songwriter/future fascist Kanye West, who had landed his first hit as a lead artist in the beginning of 2004 with "Through The Wire".  He also featured on rapper Twista's #1 hit "Slow Jamz", also appeared on Kanye's debut album College Dropout. West's second proper single from the set was "All Falls Down". A throwback sounding track written by West, it uses an interpolation of Lauryn Hill's "Mystery of Iniquity" (giving her a co-writing credit), which in this case is sung by Syleena Johnson, who like Kanye also grew up in Chicago. Johnson, though, originally came under the wing of R. Kelly, signing to Jive Records and releasing her debut album Chapter 1: Love, Pain, & Happiness in 2001. Her first single from the record, "I Am Your Woman", narrowly missed the top-40 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart at #43, and hit #4 on the Adult R&B radio list. The record also stopped right under the halfway mark on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #101, while getting to #16 on the R&B Albums list. A year later, she returned with Chapter 2: The Voice. The lead single, "Tonight I'm Gonna Let Go", went to #53 on the R&B Singles chart in American, and surprisingly scored a top-40 hit in the United Kingdom at #38, helped by a remix featuring rapper Busta Rhymes and his Flipmode Squad. That was followed by "Guess What", which hit the R&B Singles chart twice, once with a remix featuring R. Kelly while the original made it to #29, topped the Adult R&B list, and "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #104. 

"All Falls Down" has lyrics that illustrate how frustratingly good West was before his descent, with wordplay that at the time was some of the most thoughtful in the business, with the first verse describing a young woman who had gone to college but lost her way there and ended up a hairdresser who is obsessed with shopping. He then takes on the voice of a black man who uses flashy possessions and clothes to overcome his problems with self-worth. The third verse brings it full circle on how the community falls into the drug spiral which only really enriches the white guy who ends up policing them to death (if only he still had that mentality). His production mirrors Lauryn's simple neo-retro-soul groove, and Syleena does a great job emoting the joyful-sounding by lyrically down chorus. In return, Kanye returned for his first top ten hit on Billboard's Hot 100 as a lead. I guess we should've predicted what he would become, having fellow whackadoodle Stacey Dash (of Clueless fame and nothing else) as his love interest...

"All Falls Down" reached the top ten on the Hot 100 in May of 2004, while peaking at #4 on Billboard's R&B Chart and #2 on the Rap Singles list. On the radio, the song peaked at #22 on the Mainstream Top-40 chart, #3 on the Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop airplay list, and #7 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format. Internationally, the single peaked at #10 in the United Kingdom and #9 on the Canadian sales charts, while making the top-40 in New Zealand (#19) and Ireland (#23). At the Grammy Awards in 2005, "All Falls Down" was nominated for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (against himself on "Slow Jamz"), which ended up going to Usher with Lil Jon and Ludacris for "Yeah!". 

Syleena would return in 2005 first as a feature on a record with another rapper, this time Cam'ron on "Down And Out" which also had Kanye West on it. The song went to #94 on the Hot 100 and #29 on the R&B Singles chart. Johnson followed with her own third (and final) disc on Jive Records, Chapter Three: The Flesh, which scored her highest placing on the Billboard 200 at #75 and R&B Albums at #15. A song from the set, "Hypnotic" with was assisted by R. Kelly and Fabolous, was a minor hit on the R&B Singles chart at #81. This would be her final disc with Kelly and Jive Records.

 

Johnson released an album on her own Aneelys label, Chapter 4; Labor Pains, and one on the indie Shenachie imprint, Chapter V: Underrated, both of which lingered in the 40s on the R&B Albums chart. She had a little bump of notoriety by appearing on the "reality" show R&B Divas: Atlanta starting in 2012. On the third season of the show, she put out Chapter 6: Couples Therapy on the Blackbyrd label, which returned Syleena to the Billboard 200 at #197, and the R&B Albums top-40 at #29. A song from the album, "My Love", hit #21 on Billboard's Adult R&B radio chart. Her most recent album, Legacy, came out in August of 2024. And a duet with her father, recently deceased Blues Hall Of Fame artist Syl Johnson, on "Black Balloon", hit #30 on the Adult R&B list. 

As for Kanye, both he and the College Dropout album will be back to the series.

(8/10)

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Here's Kanye and Syleena performing on the British show Live With Jools Holland...

Next up in concert in 2007...

And lastly, at the Live 8 charity mega-concert (where he dabbles in conspiracy theory and hilarious condemns the kind of mega-rich that he eventually will bend a knee for),..

Up tomorrow: This child of destiny is bad, really bad.