The Meaning Behind Kanye West’s Flashy Hit “All of the Lights”

Though Kanye West used songs like “Power,” “Runaway,” and “Monster” as pre-released singles for his now-iconic 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, “All of the Lights” was a track that immediately stole the show upon the LP’s official release. Produced by West and Jeff Bhasker, the song peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100, not only because of its epic choruses and brash verses, but also the many superstar artists that lended their vocals to the recording.

In the credits for “All of the Lights,” you’ll notice that Rihanna, Fergie, Elton John, Charlie Wilson, Kid Cudi, Alicia Keys, Drake, and others are all listed as contributors, though some of their voices are difficult to make out. That’s because West recruited most of them to sing the same bridges and refrains, as he layered their vocals to create robust, fiery renditions of portions like the We going all the way this time verse and the I tried to tell you, but all I could say was oh outro.

Rihanna, though, actually played a vital role in the song, as her Turn up the lights in here, baby / Extra bright, I want y’all to see this hook was an essential facet of “All of the Lights.” However, unbeknownst to many, these catchy lyrics were written by esteemed R&B singer The-Dream, who paused a studio session with Beyoncé and Jay-Z to perfect it.

“I was working on Beyoncé’s 4 album,” The-Dream recalled in a Genius.com annotation. “Kanye just happened to stop by the studio, and he said, ‘Hey, I want you to listen to this, we can’t find the hook.’ I ended up writing the hook for that record. I also did this mumbling thing at the end. I like when those little things happen.

“He only had a rap verse of his own, the Kid Cudi part, and some Charlie Wilson background vocals. And he had the horns,” he continued. “I said ‘Oh, this is amazing. This is easy.’ The first time I did the hook, it was done. He said, ‘I don’t know yet.’ So we kept going and doing different ideas. I looked over, and Ye is knocked out. Beyoncé and Jay are sitting there. B says, ‘Dream, that first one was the one,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ We kept going while Ye was sleeping. So then I get a call a week later saying that they’re going to use that hook.”

Once this decision was finalized by West and his team, it then came time to present the demo to Rihanna to sing the official version. Immediately, she knew that this was an opportunity she could not pass up.

“[Kanye] actually played his album to me, like, three months ago, and ‘All of the Lights,’ that was one of my favorite songs,” she told MTV News at the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards. “So, when he asked me to come up to the studio at 2 o’clock in the morning, I had to because I loved it. I knew it was that song.”

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However, while The-Dream conjured up the legendary chorus and Rihanna laid the powerful vocals, the entire theme of lights that the song assumed actually came from Malik Yusef, one of the other credited songwriters. In an interview at SXSW in 2017, Yusef explained where he got the idea from.

“I thought, ‘light is a beautiful word,’” he said. “There’s all kinds of light—there’s sunlight, there’s flashlight, there’s strobe lights, there’s nightlights, there’s streetlights … all of the lights. When I said that, a literal light went off in my brain, I was like [singing] ‘All of the lights, all of the lights.’ I had it. I went upstairs and told Rick Ross, ‘I’ve got it.’ He said. ‘You sure?’ And I said, ‘I got it!’ Jeff Bhasker was in there and he came down, we recorded it, and it just started after that.”

(All of the lights), lights
Cop lights, flashlights, spotlights
Strobe lights, streetlights (All of the lights, all of the lights)
Fast life, drug life, thug life
Rock life every night (All of the lights)

When reflecting on the creation and success of the song, West compared it to an elaborate material that Nike uses for their sneakers called the Flyknit, which contains many colorful layers of woven fibers.

“‘All The Lights’ is a futurist song that started out as a Jeezy record with horns on it, then we put in another bridge, then Dream wrote the hook, then Rihanna sang it, and by the time you got it, it was to the level of like, the Nike Flyknit or something like that,” he said in a 2013 interview with The Breakfast Club.

Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images for Coachella