Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of the greatest creative minds of our generation. The composer, lyricist, playwright, actor, and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient first made it big when he wrote and starred in his first Broadway musical, In The Heights, in 2008, earning “Best Musical” and “Best Original Score” Tony Awards for his work. Despite setting the bar extremely high with his initial offering, Miranda blew the success of In The Heights out of the water with his most recent Broadway production: the wide-reaching cultural phenomenon that is Hamilton.
Hamilton: An American Musical tells the story of U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton through a hip-hop lens, with virtually all of the dialogue delivered via rap verses and the majority of the characters portrayed by actors of color. The uncanny “hip-hop narrative” of the former Treasury Secretary was the impetus for Miranda’s creation of the show: Hamilton was born poor and grew up an orphan in a rough area in the West Indies, and used writing as a vehicle to break free from his life of hardship and catapult himself into rarified status and regard. In a 2015 New York Times interview, Miranda said he feels that Hamilton’s difficult childhood echoes of Jay Z, Eminem and Biggie Smalls. “I recognized the arc of a hip-hop narrative in Hamilton’s life,” he said, adding that hip-hop was the perfect musical style for describing the American Revolution, because it is “the language of youth and energy and of rebellion.”
While the marriage of hip-hop and musical theatre has been attempted previously, such projects often feel forced and get mired in cringe-worth cheesiness. However, Hamilton has become a worldwide sensation, fully embraced by the hip-hop world as well as the musical theater community. The show’s stamp of approval from the hip-hop Universe was solidified with the release of The Hamilton Mixtape, an album that re-imagined various songs and themes from Hamilton with contributions from stars like The Roots, Alicia Keys, Usher, Sia, Miguel, Queen Latifah, Regina Spektor, Ben Folds, Kelly Clarkson, Jimmy Fallon, Ashanti, Ja Rule, Wiz Khalifa, John Legend, Common, Chance the Rapper, and many more.
On Friday, as part of his monthly “Hamildrops” series which began in late 2017, Miranda released a brand new music video for The Hamilton Mixtape track “Wrote My Way Out”. The song features Lin-Manuel Miranda, Nas, Aloe Blacc, and Dave East, and flips the concept of Hamilton “writing his way out” of poverty into a more literal interpretation of the common hip-hop trope and sees each of the MCs on the track rap about using their rhymes to escape the cycle of poverty and attain success.
The video, shot in black and white, has a classic hip-hop music video feel, and features one of hip-hop’s most revered talents. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have no idea that this track was an offshoot of a Broadway musical, nor that one of the rappers is actually a Tony-winning composer. It’s just a good song, plain and simple–a testament to the prodigious quality of Miranda and the unmatched creativity his work.
Check out the brand new video for The Hamilton Mixtape’s “Wrote My Way Out” featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Nas, Aloe Blacc, and Dave East below via the Hamilton: An American Musical YouTube page:
[Cover photo via “Wrote My Way Out” music video]