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Lin-Manuel Miranda's new album on ‘The Warriors’ brings salsa, hip-hop to the NYC film

Alison Stewart

and

Jordan Lauf

Published Oct 24, 2024

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A man and a woman stand against a wall and pose for a photo.

Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / Courtesy Warner Music Group

Alison Stewart

and

Jordan Lauf

Published Oct 24, 2024

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Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer and composer behind the Broadway hit "Hamilton," has collaborated with playwright Eisa Davis to create a new concept album, inspired by the 1979 cult classic film, "The Warriors."

It features Nas, Billy Porter, Lauryn Hill and Broadway superstars like Philippa Soo, Amber Gray, Jasmine Cephas Jones and more.

Like the movie, the album is about a Coney Island gang who must fight their way back from the Bronx after they are framed for the murder of a respected gang leader. In this new version, the Warriors are women.

“You're musicalizing what are essentially action sequences,” said Miranda of the challenge and the joy of adapting an action film into a new form.

The album also features a range of musical styles, including rock, salsa, hip-hop.

“We are all eclectics,” said Davis, of the many different kinds of styles. "It's because there are so many New Yorks that we wanted to bring that about.”

Courtesy Warner Music Group

If history repeats itself, Miranda could have another hit on his hands – as other Broadway shows, including "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Evita" and "Hadestown" all started as concept albums. Even "Hamilton: The Mixtape" started out as music but made its way to the stage.

Miranda and Davis joined Alison Stewart on a recent episode of WNYC’s All of It to discuss their collaboration, why they made the warriors a female gang and more. An edited version of their conversation is below.

Alison Stewart: Lin, a friend emailed you with the idea for a "Warriors" musical, and you said, "I love The Warriors. It'll never work. Here's why." What were your reasons then, and what made you decide to revisit the idea?

Lin-Manuel Miranda: First of all, I saw that movie when I was way too young to see it on a friend's VHS. It was inscribed on two stone tablets for me. I was like, "It's untouchable." Also, the action movie part of it scared me. Action movies and musicals are always fighting for the same storytelling real estate: We're going to fight and, or, sing in various combinations over the course of the evening. Then he incepted me. Thanks to Phil Westgren for sending me that email. It was bubbling in my head for a few years. I finished Hamilton, and I got on the other side of that whole experience, and then it was taking up all this real estate.

Another part that interested me was when I mentally made the gender flip of the Warriors as a female gang. It's such an aggro, testosterone movie that recasting them suddenly made every plot point more interesting or compelling to write about. I love writing for women's voices. "Encanto" [for which Miranda wrote several songs] was like a masterclass in writing for lots of different women's voices. I said, "I need someone smarter and cooler than me to help me write this."

That would be Eisa. Why did you say yes to this project?

Eisa Davis: I mean, come on: Lin. That's number one. This is someone I have known for years. We first met when "Passing Strange" and "In the Heights" were both off Broadway and then came on Broadway 2007, 2008. We've been playing around in the same sandbox for a while.

We both have this deep aesthetic kinship when it comes to having a hybridity of genre and bringing hip-hop and – in Lin's case – bringing all of the Latin traditional music onto the stage, places that they've never been. I, of course, had to say, I want to hang out with this person where it's never a glass half-full, half-empty with Lin. It's like always a cup runneth over, and how do we share that with people?

I also was really stunned by the film. I'd actually never seen it, even though I'd known it to be so important and crucial to the culture. Particularly hip-hop culture. Particularly New York culture.

Why do you like to write for women's voices? That's an interesting one.

Miranda: It's so much more fun. Part of it is, subconsciously, I'm always trying to write the best school musical possible. I fell in love with theatre – not by seeing shows – but by being in the school play. When you have a really good school play, there's lots of parts for everybody, and there's lots of parts for women because they audition the guys at an eight to one ratio. I remember trying to convince my friends who were guys, "Please don't play basketball. Come audition for the musical. We need dancers." Yes, I guess that's my answer.

The movie is all about the '70s. What was interesting about New York in the '70s that you wanted to bring forward?

Miranda: I think the fun of writing musicals set in New York – this is my third, fourth go round doing that – is that there's so many New Yorks inside New York. Setting it in 1979, obviously, from the perspective of 2024, allowed us to play with all the different musical subcultures that were happening in '79 at the time, not just the ones represented in the film.

There's so many different kinds of music on the album. I was listening to it on the way home. All of a sudden, there's a rock song, and then there's a salsa song, and there's hip-hop. Why did you want to incorporate so many different kinds of music? You could have just stayed with hip-hop.

Davis: I think it's because Lin and I and our producer, Mike Elizondo, whose birthday it is today.

Miranda: Happy birthday.

Eisa Davis: We are all eclectics. We love being able to both love and also express through character all of these different kinds of styles. It's because there are so many New Yorks that we wanted to bring that about. I can't imagine this album as one particular, one single style of music. That would not get at what this is. You don't hear that in the film either. There are different styles of music that are there. We both have a dedication to diversity, period, when it comes to our storytelling and representation.

Miranda: It's also just fun.

Davis: It's so much fun. You want to play.

Miranda: When Eisa had the idea to have Luther sound like a screamo metal God, she played me this track and I was like, "I can feel my grandmothers in heaven crossing themselves on my behalf." This is so scary. This is exactly right. It's scary and chaotic and virtuosic, and that's exactly Luther, who's a maestro of chaos. It's fun. The fun of writing musicals is you getting to match tempo and temperament to character.

You have interesting people on the project. You have Nas and Lauryn Hill to Colman Domingo.

Davis: Yes. Colman.

Amber Gray. What did you like about mixing, first of all, the Broadway names with the hip-hop names?

Miranda: Our Warriors are all theater stars. Honestly, that began as us just calling our friends to do demos for us. We called a lot of these folks in. There's a lot of "Hamilton" alums in there. A lot of friends of ours. Then when we heard them all singing together, we were like, "Oh, there's a thing happening." There's a chemistry happening here.

At one point, Eisa finally turned to me and she was like, "What pop star are we going to get that is better than what's happening right now?" They fell into the snowball as it rolled down the hill.

What did they bring out in each other?

Miranda: That's a great question because I think the thing that's central to all of these genres is storytelling, and they all go about that very differently. In hip-hop, you write your own verses, you write your own feature. That was a big mind shift for some of them to be like, "No, you're playing a character and you're writing these lyrics."

Miranda: Yes. Busta Rhymes being like, "You are the only person I have let write lyrics for me. I don't let other people write my lyrics." That's like a real code of honor thing.

Davis: It was a huge leap with Lauryn Hill as well. Because of the fact that we got to bring people together in the studio.

What concept albums did you listen to when you were a little kid?

Miranda: Jesus Christ Superstar on rotation. There's a Rubén Blades album called "Maestra Vida" that was like this two-part concept salsa album that was big for me. Prince Paul with "Prince Among Thieves" is the hip-hop concept album. It tells a guy's entire day of his life.

Before we wrap up, I do have to play a voice that our listeners will recognize from the album.

Davis: Bernie.

Explain to folks who Bernie is.

Davis: Bernie is the voice of the MTA. That "Stand clear of the closing doors" comes from her voice. We are so thrilled. I'm so glad that we got to have her.

Miranda: Yes. She did all the MTA "Stand clear" announcements for years for the subway system. We brought her into the studio to record all of our subway drops.

Davis: Yes. Shout out to Bernie. Thank you so much.

Miranda: We love Bernie.

Davis: Yes.

The name of the album is "Warriors." Will it be a stage show?

Miranda: Listen, we're open to it.

Davis: Yes, that would be cool.

Miranda: We worked really hard just to make the album, so we're going to soak in people's reception of it, which has been really positive. That's been wonderful to see. The albums we all mentioned eventually turned into shows. Some of them took longer than others. Yes, we're definitely open to it.

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