Hamilton Mixtape a smash hit
December 22, 2016
It seems that nobody can get enough of “Hamilton.” The breakout Broadway sensation first hit the stage off-Broadway in 2015 and has since captured the hearts of thousands of history buffs and theatre kids alike.
Now, “Hamilton” fans are ecstatic to know that the Hamilton Mixtape, a set of remixes for the original soundtrack, was released on Dec. 2.
It features artists like Alicia Keys, Sia, Queen Latifah, Usher and many more. The track list is a total of 23 songs, most of which are remixes and covers of the original soundtrack. But the mixtape also contains several demos of songs that didn’t make the final cut of Hamilton, such as “Valley Forge” and “Cabinet Battle 3.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote and starred in “Hamilton,” created the tracks that make up the mixtape. Initially, Miranda wanted to create a Hamilton mixtape, before it evolved into a full musical.
“I wanted to write really dense, fun lyrics like my favorite hip-hop artists did,” Miranda said in an interview with Lisa Robinson for Vanity Fair. “I thought I would write a bunch of great songs that tell the greatest hits of Hamilton’s life, have artists cover it, and someone else would stage it later.”
The uniqueness of this soundtrack’s remixes comes from its cultural relevance since Miranda created it as “a love letter” to the hip-hop community. He thinks Alexander Hamilton has more in common with rap artists than people may think – he used his words to rise to political power, and eventually they caused his fall out of political power.
The mixtape is an incredibly diverse, ingenious set of tracks that blew me away. The covers perfectly highlighted the key parts of each song while bringing the respective artists’ flair to the table. The remixes were a bridge from the modern world to the American Revolution; the rappers who told their stories easily found parallels from the Founding Fathers’ lives to their own. My personal favorites were the demos, and I wish they had made it into the final play. Overall, the mixtape was a unique and fresh take on the already outstanding soundtrack that I found impossible to turn off.