After the unprecedented cultural and financial success <\/i>of Hamilton: An American Musical<\/i>, Lin-Manuel Miranda had everyone from actors to musical artists beating down his door wanting a piece of the action, a chance to not only see the show but in some small way be a part of it themselves. His solution: The Hamilton Mixtape<\/i>, an opportunity for his famous friends to put their own stamp on what had been largely his singular creation. The result, like most mixtapes, is inconsistent, but on the strength of the original source material, it is more than worth the effort.<\/p>\n
Some songs exist on the album simply to give fans a glimpse at Miranda\u2019s rough drafts. \u201cValley Forge\u201d and \u201cCabinet Battle 3,\u201d for example, are both demos (with the bad sound quality to prove it) recorded by Miranda himself during the days before Hamilton<\/i> was a finished product. These serve as interesting looks at his process, but also proof that some things are better left on the cutting room floor\u2014for all their lyrical dexterity, the show isn\u2019t missing anything necessary without them. In \u201cAn Open Letter\u201d and \u201cCongratulations,\u201d Miranda hands his rough drafts off to other artists (Watsky and Dessa, respectively), who provide their own flair to songs that barely missed the musical\u2019s final cut.<\/p>\n
Other tracks function as straight covers of some of the Hamilton\u2019s<\/i> best material. Some artists give the familiar songs new life, most notably Kelly Clarkson, whose powerful, emotional performance of \u201cIt\u2019s Quiet Uptown\u201d reportedly left her in tears during the recording process. John Legend\u2019s \u201cHistory Has Its Eyes On You\u201d and Alicia Keys\u2019 \u201cThat Would Be Enough\u201d both bring some soul to the party, as does Sia in the melodic portion of \u201cSatisfied.\u201d Unfortunately, other performances fall flat\u2014as good as Sia is in \u201cSatisfied,\u201d her performance is blunted by Queen Latifah\u2019s flat, unenergetic rapping. Similarly, Regina Spektor and Ben Folds make no waves in their version of \u201cDear Theodosia\u201d (unlike Chance The Rapper, who shines in his version at the end of the album). And as legendary as their partnership usually is, Ashanti should have told Ja Rule no when she heard his take on \u201cHelpless.\u201d<\/p>\n
The best material on the mixape comes from those artists who took a line, theme, or sample from the musical and then created something original from it. When the Roots and Busta Rhymes join forces on \u201cMy Shot,\u201d they take an 18th<\/sup> century story of ambition and bring it into the 21st<\/sup>, making explicit the universality of the musical\u2019s message. Similarly, \u201cWrote My Way Out,\u201d my favorite track on the album, sees Nas, Dave East, and ultimately Miranda himself trading verses about the pen\u2019s power to bring salvation, with a sung chorus by Aloe Blacc that brings it all together. And the most culturally resonant song on the mixtape, \u201cImmigrants (We Get the Job Done),\u201d has four different artists rapping in multiple languages over a sample of the musical\u2019s most famous applause line, to great effect.<\/p>\n Not everything on the album works, of course. Jimmy Fallon\u2019s performance on \u201cYou\u2019ll Be Back\u201d is light on both comedy and singing talent, leaving you to wonder what the point was. Similarly, two brief interludes do little to move the mixtape along, thus coming across as filler in an already lengthy album.<\/p>\n But on the whole, The Hamilton Mixtape<\/i> is much more than the cash grab a cynic might assume it to be. Curated by Lin-Manuel Miranda and featuring some of pop and hip-hop\u2019s biggest names, fans of Hamilton<\/i> would do themselves a disservice by not giving it a listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":33561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5827],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-45382","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-various-artists","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45382"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}