"Drummer Boy" is a cover of Katherine Davis, Henry Onorati and Harry Simeone's Christmas song "The Little Drummer Boy" by Canadian singer Justin Bieber, featuring American rapper Busta Rhymes, from his second studio album and first Christmas release, Under the Mistletoe (2011). The cover was produced by Bieber himself, alongside Sean K and Kuk Harrell. Leaked days before the album's November 1, 2011 date on October 28, it would later be officially released as the seventh track to Under the Mistletoe, through Island Records, RBMG Records, and Schoolboy Records.
"Drummer Boy" is an uptempo hip-hop techno club track where Bieber sings the original song's lyrics and melody while rapping about himself, poverty and charity. Contemporaneously, the track was met with polarization and confusion from professional music critics, who perceived it as bizarre and silly, and thought that it was bastardizing the meaning of the original song. In later years, the song has been more well-received, with appreciation toward its weirdness, the unlikeliness of a collaboration between Bieber and Rhymes. It has made several best-of lists of Christmas songs by publications such as Billboard, as well as worst-of lists by The Guardian and Time Out London.
Upon its release, the track reached number 89 in Bieber's home country on Billboards Canadian Hot 100. It also peaked at number 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States of America, and was a top-ten hit on the U.S. Holiday 100 in the chart's first year, peaking at number 9, its highest position on any chart it made. In 2020, "Drummer Boy" was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales exceeding 500,000 units in the United States. It would also be earned the same certification by Music Canada (MC) for sales exceeding 40,000 units in the country. The song was also promoted through live performances with Rhymes and Tinie Tempah, and was also performed on the series finale of Dancing with the Stars: Juniors (2018).
Background and release
Months before Believe (2012), a Christmas album by Justin Bieber, Under the Mistletoe (2011), was released on November 1, 2011, and promoted via donations to several charities, such as Make-A-Wish, Pencils of Promise, and a food bank Bieber's family once depended on named Startford House of Blessing. The track list, revealed on October 5, 2011, includes several collaborations, such as a duet cover of "All I Want For Christmas is You" with Mariah Carey, "Fa La La" with Boyz II Men and a duet with his mentor Usher "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire)".
Under the Mistletoe also includes a Busta Rhymes-featuring cover of "The Little Drummer Boy", originally written by Katherine Davis, Henry Onorati and Harry Simeone, simply named "Drummer Boy". The track has added rap verses written by Bieber and Busta Rhymes, and was produced by Bieber, Kuk Harrell and Sean K, Harrell also credited as vocal producer.Bieber, Justin. Under the Mistletoe. Island Records/Island Def Jam Music Group. 2011. The song had been covered over 220 times, most notably by Bing Crosby but also by Carey, Johnny Cash, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and Destiny's Child. "Drummer Boy" is Bieber's third collaboration with a notable rapper, after Ludacris with "Baby" and Kanye West and Raekwon with a remix of the My World 2.0 (2010) cut "Runaway Love".
Both "All I Want For Christmas is You" and "Drummer Boy" was leaked on October 28, 2011, only days before the album's release. As part of a November 14, 2011 ITV1 special promoting the album, Bieber performed the rendition with British rapper Tinie Tempah, which was promoted on Twitter by both artists. On November 30, 2011, Busta Rhymes and Bieber performed "Drummer Boy" as part of the annual Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. Bieber and Busta Rhymes also lip-synced to "Drummer Boy" as part of the NBA's Christmas Opening Day on December 25, 2011. On November 15, 2011, John Waters was reported rapping "Playing for the king / Playing for the title / I'm surprised you didn't hear this in the Bible" expressing admiration for Bieber's album, while leaving the Museum of Modern Art event "Tribute to Pedro Almodóvar" on a subway.
Composition
"Drummer Boy" is an uptempo synthesizer-heavy hip-hop techno club track driven by a "thumping dance beat". Bieber raps on "Drummer Boy", part of his experimentation with different styles on Under the Mistletoe, as well as plays drums. "Drummer Boy" alternates between Bieber singing the lyrics of "The Little Drummer Boy" and rap verses. Bieber's first rap verse involves him bragging about himself and his skills, analogizing them as Biblical and comparable to Michael Jackson: "Playin for the king, playin for the title, / I'm surprised you didn't hear this in the Bible. / I'm so tight, I might go psycho. / Christmas time so here's a recital. / I'm so bad like Michael, I know I'm still young but I go I go." His second deals with poverty and charity, recommending that "It's about time for you to act merrily / It's about time for you to give to charity". Busta Rhymes' verse is about "exchanging Twitter messages with Mr. Bieber at the holiday dinner table". Analyzed Nate Jones of People, in repeats of "The Little Drummer Boy" melody, "[Bieber] shoots the notes sky-high and rides them down on a shuttle of Mariah Carey melisma."
Commercial performance "Drummer Boy" debuted at number two on the U.S. Holiday Digital Song Sales chart on the week of November 19, 2011, the same week the Bieber and Carey duet topped the chart. It then landed on the all-format Holiday 100 at number nine on the week of December 28, 2011, in the chart's first year and the same week Under the Mistletoes title track and lead single went to number one. The same week, "Drummer Boy" re-entered at number 86 on the chart's all-genre all-format Hot 100, debuting on an earlier week at number 99. As of December 16, 2022, the song has had 23 weeks on the Holiday Digital Songs Sales chart. On June 25, 2020, the Recording Industry Association of America certified "Drummer Boy" gold for sales exceeding 500,000 units.
Critical reception Contemporaneous
"Drummer Boy" was met with polarization and mystification from reviewers upon its release; critics called it a "a goofy modernized spin", "confusing", weird, and "as awkward as it sounds, but at least it's different". The staff at Idolator expressed themselves speechless, questioning "Seriously, is this genius? Is this ridiculous? We’re really not sure. [...] In the meantime, we'll be listening to this another 20 times." As Matt Stopera of BuzzFeed summarized his opinion, "I can't even handle this. It's just too much." Entertainment Weekly found it Under the Mistletoes worst track, complaining that "Bieber spits some of the looniest white-boy rhymes off the shores of Lonely Island", citing the example, "I'm so tight I might go psycho/Christmas time, so here's a recital." Washington City Papers Brooke Hatfield called Bieber's performance "unremarkable at best", and disliked Bieber's sustain of the last use of "pum" of every verse as lasting "about seventeen syllables long on several occasions".
Some reviewers, however, supported the track, even those who were underwhelmed by the album. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer praised the song as "satisfyingly over the top" and "flipped and tossed in a way never imagined before", highlighting the performances of Bieber and Busta Rhymes: "both Bieber and Rhymes spark such creative surges within each other that it makes one wonder why they did not collaborate on this song sooner." Busta Rhymes' contribution was well received by The Guardians Caroline Sullivan, who generally found the guest stars the "saving grace" of the album, as a "raucous flow". Randy Lewis, a writer for the Los Angeles Times positively commented that the song "injects some adrenalin into that war horse" of an album of "head-scratching fare", and the Financial Times journalist Ludovic Hunter-Tilney claimed "Bieber strikes gold with his bonkers version of 'Drummer Boy' when he goes all B-boy with rapping, Timbaland-style beats and a yo-yo-yo’ing cameo from Busta Rhymes."
As an album by a Christian teenage artist, Under the Mistletoe lyrics received criticism for questionable lyrics, the title track and "Mistletoe" being the most commonly brought-up examples. Some critics felt "Drummer Boy"s modern music genre and incorporation of references to non-Christian holidays and pop culture, such as Chinchilla coats, Twitter, and BlackBerry phones, bastardized the source material's meaning and message. As Hatfield described, "Replace the Magi with Usher and the baby Jesus with the Internet and you have a pretty accurate representation of why culture wars are fought." Bieber's pleas of giving to charity was appreciated by some reviewers, including Tris McCall of Inside Jersey, reasoning, "Tennyson he is not, but you can tell the kid means it." Others, as Brian Kirk of the Washington Post summarized, found it insincere, only "encouraging his teen listeners to change the world by giving a can of food". Kirk disagreed with the complaints; he felt that the spirit of the song matched that of the story of the holiday standard, which was about a boy being encouraged by Mary to give a gift however small. As he analysed, "Bieber does the same. He draws in his teen audience with a catchy beat and fun lyrics but then hooks us finally with a call to do what we can to help those in need, even as we are surrounded by the excesses of the holiday season."
Retrospective In later years, some publications have claimed "Drummer Boy" to be one of the best all-time Christmas songs. It was ranked 110 on a 2021 list by Parade, and 39 in a piece by Good Housekeeping. Dianna Shen of L'Officiel called it one of the best all-time covers of a Holiday staple. Both she and Good Housekeeping journalists Juliana Labianca and Yaa Bofah favourably labelled the track an "absolute" and "certifiable bop", Labianca and Bofah motivated by its message. The Skinny equivalently described it as a "hell of a banger", elaborating, "it's got all the vital components that make for an alternative Christmas song – superfluous vocal runs, shit-hot bars ('Playing for the king / playing for the title / I'm surprised you didn't hear this in the Bible') and a Busta Rhymes cameo." In terms of holiday hip-hop tracks, it was one of the top 25 in an unranked list by uDiscoverMusic, and the 12th best by Billboard in 2018, which also claimed it to be the fourth-best Justin Bieber deep cut in 2017. It was reported in 2017 to be one of "the best cheesy Christmas songs" by The Times, alongside Madonna's cover of "Santa Baby".
Out of lists of Christmas songs, The Busta Rhymes-Bieber duet has a reputation of being one of the most unexpected and odd music collaborations of all time, topping Peoples 2013 list of weirdest holiday duets. Stan Veuger, Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, placed it at number 21 on his list of "The 21 Greatest Conservative Rap Songs of All Time", citing the song's perceived promotion of private charities over taxation. XXL, in 2017, ranked it the fourth-best collaboration between Bieber and a hip-hop artist, out of 24.