Welcome to Drumming Upstream! I’m learning how to play every song I’ve ever Liked on Spotify on drums and writing about each song as I go. When I’ve learned them all I will delete my Spotify account in a blaze of glory. Only 442 songs to go!
This week I learned “Mercy.1”, a smash hit from the summer of 2012 featuring Big Sean, Pusha T, Kanye West, and 2 Chainz with production by Lifted and a number of other producers. Does the song add up to more than the sum of its parts, or is it dragged down by its creator’s legacy? And just who’s song is it anyway? Find out below.
Side A
“Mercy.1”
By Kanye West
Cruel Summer
Released on September 14th, 2012
Liked on January 28th, 2016
Whose song is “Mercy.1”?
The official answer is Kanye West, the now disgraced superstar rapper and producer. When we last saw West in this series he was behind the boards for Jay-Z’s “Takeover” (DU#19) in 2001. A decade later West was one of the most famous and critically acclaimed musicians in the world. By the summer of 2012, when “Mercy.1” was unavoidable on rap radio and at college parties, West was on the second bend of a multi-year victory lap. He’d weathered the storm of bad PR following the 2009 VMAs fiasco, won back critical support and public good will with 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and then doubled down by co-headling 2011’s Watch The Throne with his former mentor Jay-Z. Determined to keep the good times going through 2012, West released five singles in advance of Cruel Summer, a compilation meant to show off the roster of West’s G.O.O.D. Music label. As the first and most successful of these five singles, “Mercy.1” was received without question as part of Kanye’s rapidly expanding body of work.
Calling “Mercy.1” a Kanye West song might be technically correct, but it is also a reduction with odious consequences. The strange irony of West’s three year run to start the 2010s is that the higher his star rose, the less direct of a presence he seemed to have in his own music. He raps only one of “Mercy.1”’s four verses, with a few ad-libs sprinkled in for good measure, and he’s one of at least four credited producers on the track (more about the producers on Side B). Even with the implicit understanding that the song is an execution of West’s vision, listening to “Mercy.1” involves hearing the work of a lot of other people. One of Kanye West’s greatest strengths was his ability to surround himself with interesting people, at least until his definition of interesting veered sharply into psychedelically incoherent fascism. “Mercy.1”, released long before that dark turn, was meant to be a showcase for that exact curatorial skillset, but it wouldn’t have taken over the summer without the contributions of the rest of the ensemble. Ye may be the reason for the season, but he didn’t deck the halls.
The trouble with reducing “Mercy.1” to just the product of Kanye’s genius is that it obscures the work rest of its team and chokes out conversation about the song’s merits with the noxious fog of Kanye’s reputation. Hence the two paragraphs of air clearing. So while we could talk about how “Mercy.1” fits into the grand narrative of Kanye’s rise and fall, I think we’d all have a lot more fun if we left the true ownership of “Mercy.1” as an open question. Based purely on the song itself, who does “Mercy.1” belong to? If I’m being honest, mulling over this kind of question is half the fun of songs that feature multiple rappers, colloquially called “posse cuts”. Collaboration invites comparison. Something deep in the human mind craves to be asked “Choose your fighter”. Pick your favorite color Power Ranger. Select your most delectable critter in Pokémon. Declare who had the best verse under threat of forever being a cornball. Luckily for us, “Mercy.1” has something for everyone. Each rappers brings something distinct. Do you prefer the pinchable-cheeked pretty boy smarm of Big Sean, the “real” rap precision of Pusha T, Kanye West’s egocentric bombast, or the bulldozing charisma of 2 Chainz?
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