I think that Lin is stepping forward, boldly, with the first real synthesis of two great American institutions: the Broadway musical and hip-hop. Before Hamilton, each of them had their monuments. Broadway had its Chorus Line, Cats and West Side Story. Hip-hop had its Ready to Die, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 3 Feet High and Rising. But the two worlds turned independently of one another. When there was a seismic event on Broadway, the citizens of hip-hop nation didn’t feel the ground move under their feet. And when there was a major release or retrenchment in hip-hop, the dancers and directors and dramaturges didn’t experience an inner reawakening. Until now. Because Hamilton’s isn’t just a hip-hop musical or a stage presentation of hip-hop; it’s organically and genuinely both things at once, in ways that are too important to be skimmed over.
Let’s start with the music and build up from there. When I hear Hamilton described as a “hip-hop musical,” even when I’m the one doing the describing, I balk a little bit at the phrase. Even when swearing to friends that it’s not “B-boy with spirit fingers,” it’s hard to capture. The music in the show isn’t limited to hip-hop. There are elements of pop and elements of rock and elements of the more traditional show-tune feel. But the very fact that the show draws on all these diverse genres is exactly what makes it hip-hop in spirit. Think back to all the different kinds of music and musical energy that have been absorbed into hip-hop. Run-DMC used American hard rock, in the form of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” for their song of the same name. Kanye West sampled classic R&B, in the form of Ray Charles, for “Gold Digger.” And Jay-Z used Broadway show tunes themselves, in the form of the Annie lament “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” for “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” (and then, in an encore performance, the Oliver! song “I’ll Do Anything” for “Anything”). Hip-hop, at its heart, draws on old pieces of multiple traditions but gives them a new context and new life.
The show’s tagline, “This is the story of America then, told by America now,” thinks that it’s about American history, but it’s just as much about American musical history, and specifically about the way that hip-hop has always operated. It locates the past and adds a layer of the present in a way that becomes genuinely forward-looking. That’s the first great hip-hop characteristic of the show, to borrow all kinds of music equally, and to turn them toward one end.
The second comes from Lin’s profound understanding of what makes hip-hop truly revolutionary. Broadway, at its best, works because of its spectacle: It has precision and scale and energy, and it manages to have these things over and over again without losing a step. A Broadway trouper can hit his or her marks precisely and powerfully whether it’s the first time or (in the case of the Phantom of the Opera) the 10 thousandth. Hip-hop comes from a different place. It has immediacy and cleverness and the sense of doing something big with relatively simple supplies (voice, sample, brain).
This is where Hamilton really soars. Every time I have seen it, I have tried to dissect what I’m watching: not to understand it, but to dissect it, analytically, and then count the parts. There aren’t that many parts. There are actors and dancers and a script and lighting cues and music. Those are the basic organs required for survival. But they’re used with an efficiency and a certainty that can only come from hip-hop, and from Lin’s understanding of what hip-hop really is, down at the bottom.
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