Songfacts®:

• Joel "JoJo" Hailey penned the tender love ballad "All My Life" as a tribute to his 7-year-old daughter, Kayla, but tweaked the lyrics so that it works as a universal love song (the line "and I will never find another lover more precious than you" would otherwise be very, very awkward). It's a song of adoration and gratitude, putting a lover on a pedestal of undying devotion.
• JoJo's daughter Kayla was also responsible for the song's title. JoJo had a wordless melody and nebulous feeling in his head, and the lyrics and song title only came together when Kayla walked into the recording studio and said the simple phrase "all my life" to her dad.
• Brothers K-Ci & JoJo Hailey were founding members of the sexually provocative swing-beat outfit Jodeci, who enjoyed several US chart hits during the 1990s including "Lately" and "Get On Up." In 1996, K-Ci & JoJo decided to temporarily split from Jodeci to record on their own. Success came swiftly when the duo featured prominently on 2Pac's #1 single "How Do U Want It" that summer.
• "All My Life" was the third single released off K-Ci & JoJo's debut album, Love Always, in 1997. The ballad-heavy album was a stark contrast to their libidinous work in Jodeci. K-Ci told Billboard magazine, "With Jodeci, we might sing 'Freek'n You,' and with K-Ci & JoJo, we don't use the word 'sex.'"
• The track almost didn't make it onto Love Always. "The song was originally supposed to be used for… another artist, a female artist on A&M Records," JoJo told MTV News. "But we listened to it after we got out of the studio and it was like, 'I'm keeping this, this is too hot.'"
• The song's piano line has been sampled on several other recordings including Chris Brown's 2005 hit "Say Goodbye" and Nelly's 2007 track "Wadsyaname."
• The Love Always album, which reached the US Top 10 and went multi-platinum, spawned three Hot 100 charting singles, including April 1998's chart-topping "All My Life." In addition to hitting #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, "All My Life" also topped charts and went Platinum in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
• JoJo sings the opening verse on this one, then the brothers dynamically hand off vocal duties for the rest of the song, which is the K-Ci & JoJo formula. They're both credited as co-writers.
• "All My Life" was the first and only #1 song for K-Ci & JoJo. It held the position for three consecutive weeks in April 1998.
• The song was nominated for Best R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song at the 1999 Grammy Awards. MTV also nominated the video for Best R&B Video of 1998, but it lost out to "Gone Till November" by Wyclef Jean.