For me it was the best song on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Interesting, catchy, got Rihanna on there, just an amazing track!

Why didn't it become #1 or a top 10 hit all over the world?

no hit appeal
but same question can be asked for Monster and Runaway.

It decided to smash on pop too late. :/

The song itself is very good. Kanye just made a mistake by choosing Rihanna to sing the chorus. She's really overplayed and people are tired of her voice.

I could imagine GaGa or Bey doing Rihanna's part

It was a good song and when I was over there in Colorado skiing in Feb it was bieng played all over the radio.

I have no idea.

Please, don't start with this.

Because there were 102937563821910013856578292 Rihanna singles on the radio at the same time.

It didn't have massive appeal because Kanye's parts are rather dark in contrast with the anthemic nature of the song, and it came after Kanye had already released 3 singles that essentially flopped, so the release was just a mess. He started talking about the video for Monster while AOTL was being released. It did well enough for what it is, didn't it reach about 70 million AI? And Kanye was never huge internationally anyway, his last big hit was Stronger which heavily relies on a sample by Daft Punk who are huge in Europe

Because all the features at the end of the song ruined it...and none of them were credited...
I wanted just Kanye, Rihanna, Fergie and maybe Kid Cudi...

It's not like it didn't totally smash, I mean its still in rotation on Urban & Rhythmic Radios. Pop was too late so thats why it peaked where it peaked

It WAS really popular though, or at least I thought. Everyone was singing it over here at least. Lol I remember one time in school, some lame turned off the lights in the classroom, and I sang at the top of lungs "TURN ON THE LIGHTS IN HERE, BABY! EXTRA BRIGHT, I WANT Y"ALL TO SEE THIS!" and everybody busted out LOLing.

I think it was popular, it just didn't reflect in the stats.

no shade to rih but this post is true. she already had other singles out at the time that were smashing. around that time she had Who's That Chick, What's My Name, Only Girl as well. it was a lot of rihanna

also IMO the song isn't THAT good. the song is very good but the hook/ chorus wasn't catchy enough when you compare it to Empire State of Mind... which did smash WW.