goodlit

“All Falls Down,” The College Dropout (2004)
Nike Air Jordan 7 “Raptors” (1992)
When I think of Kanye West, it doesn’t take me long before
I start thinking about his shoes. The man’s sneaker game is
iconic. He’s single-handedly double-footedly raised the profile
of certain retro sneakers, made entire genres of footwear hip
to new audiences, and designed multiple high-end pairs for
multiple brands. But it wasn’t until the video for “All Falls
Down,” the third single off of his debut album, that we see
Kanye’s feet at all. His shoes were clipped out of our sight by
the borders of a Polaroid picture or by the pastor’s pulpit. A
deliberate framing that now feels like fear, feels like Kanye
holding back, feels like self-containment. And that feeling is
largely present in the video for “All Falls Down,” a first-person
narrative that sees Kanye escort his girl to Chicago O’Hare
International Airport. Kanye is our avatar in this video, and we
see glimpses of the black toebox of his sneakers whenever he
looks down. For a brief moment towards the end of the video,
Kanye lays down to run himself through an x-ray machine as
if he were baggage – no doubt reflective of the song’s lyrical
critiques of consumer culture (including namedrops of Nike’s
Jordans and Air Force Ones). In this moment we can make out
the tongue and accent piping of his sneakers. He’s wearing
the True Red and Dark Charcoal colorway of the Air Jordan 7,
which is commonly referred to as the “Raptors,” even though
the similarly-colored Toronto Raptors NBA franchise wouldn’t
exist until 3 years after the shoe came out. The sneaker
was over a decade old when this video dropped, instantly
establishing Kanye West as a serious sneakerhead. In a way, I
see this choice of footwear as foreshadowing: as Kanye’s way
of saying “the real Kanye West has existed long before you
will recognize him.”
#GOODLitSwerveAutumn