Kanye West's 10 Year Anniversary of
College Dropout, his first record, is approaching so Billboard did a series of interviews with 26 people who participated in the making of that album. Here's what they said about "All Falls Down" and "Mystery of Iniquity". It gives you some more insight into why Lauryn was pissed about the music industry and why she's so tough on musicians.
"All Falls Down"88-Keys: "Lauryn Hill was supposedly working on a follow-up album [to 1998's 'The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill']. My manager, who is also one of my best friends, Daniel Glogower, caught wind of it, and was trying to make things happen. From what we were told, we couldn't just submit tracks. The label wanted to hear what people would sound like working with her without actually working with her. They didn't have acapella stems to give to us, but they suggested the Lauryn Hill ‘Unplugged’ album. Daniel gave the CD to me and I skimmed through it. There were only some I can program, and use the drums. As I'm working on it, Kanye and I had been best friends going on two-years. Any work that came my way, he was one of two people I always tried to put on. Him and the great J. Dilla -- they were the ones I tried telling everybody about. I hit him up, told him about it, drove to his crib, and dropped the CD. I told him what needed to be done. I said, 'Give it to me or Daniel and we'll submit it.' He ended up making this crazy beat with the drum programming and all this other things he did to it. I'm like, 'Yo, are you going to give it to Lauryn?' And he's like, 'Nah, I'm going to keep it for myself.'"
JB Marshall: "We walked into Baseline [Studios], mid-day, and it smelled like incense, and the ambiance was chill. He said it was 'the time before the madness,' because Jay or State Property wouldn't come in 'til night. I looked at the console and there were two CDs: an Anita Baker CD and Lauryn Hill's MTV Unplugged CD. That album ['MTV Unplugged No. 2.0'] was like the Bible. Before we went to the studio that day, we were working on a song called 'Self-Conscious.' The lyrics were so on point. It had the ability to truly be a single but they wanted the production to marry the lyrics. I took him to take the Lauryn album. We went back to Newark, and told Westside (it's what I call him) to 'The Mystery of Iniquity.' He had his 'Aha' expression. He's like, 'I can die right now.' I'm playing pool, and he comes around and he starts singing: 'When it all falls down.' I told him to go to the end of the record and hear the clapping at the end, and he gave me that look again. That day or the next day, Coodie and J. Ivy and he played them 'All Falls Down.'"
Devo Springsteen: "'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."
John Monopoly: "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)."
Shalik Berry: "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."
Plain Pat: "She (Lauryn Hill) cleared it but then didn't clear it. She pulled the clearance at the last minute. We were scrambling. We had all these replays and Syleena Johnson was at the Record Plant at the studio across. We were up all night [recording], up ’til 7am cutting it."
Kyambo "Hip Hop" Joshua: "I think that Lauryn was more mad at her version of that record, that the real one never came out. All that stuff that she did at the show, she'd say they were real records. By him putting it out like that, she felt like it was his [version] would come out before hers. And… it never came out."
John Monopoly: "We all kind of knew that was the record that was really going to break through. That's why we went so hard to get the sample cleared."
Devo Springsteen: "They experimented with John Legend at one point [in place of Lauryn Hill]."
Consequence: "I remember when it was called ‘Self-Conscious’ and it was to a different beat. The rhymes were so societal and unisex, just like ‘Spaceship.’ Women could relate to it. He was talking about a girl but the shit he was saying was so relevant, you couldn’t even front."
Syleena Johnson: "I was in the studio, in LA, recording for 'Chapter 3.' I was recording a song called 'Bull’s-Eye' which featured Common and was produced by Kanye. We were in the studio, and he said, 'Syleena, I have this record that Lauryn Hill won’t give me the clearance for the sample.' He needed someone to re-sing it. 'Can you try this for me?' he asked. It was right after we recorded 'Bull's-Eye.' I went in and re-sang 'The Mystery of Iniquity.' I sang over it. And, he was like 'do what you would do,' because I kept singing it exactly like she did, because obviously you’d want that same vibe. That’s how that little switch of the run came in. After that, they looked at each and smiled. The very next morning they called me and said, 'This is the single. It’s going to radio. We’re shooting the video in a week.' I was like, 'Oh, okay! That’s awesome.’ I didn’t hear the entire thing ’til it hit the radio."
www.billboard.com/articles/columns/the-juice/5893976/kanye-wests-the-college-dropout-an-oral-history?page=0%2C0