Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?

Getting to know the genius behind the revolution

“I’m thrilled the White House called me tonight because, uh, I’m actually working on a hip hop album. It’s a concept album about the life of someone I think embodies hip hop: treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton.” There is a ripple of laughing throughout the audience. “You laugh but it’s true!” Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama sit on the front row, intrigued by what is is about to take place on the small stage in front on them. Cue an aggressive piano entrance followed by a soft, high flutter of the keys. Lin-Manuel Miranda, or at this time Vice President Aaron Burr, looked up and uttered the first words of a song that would soon be the spark that would start a revolution.

Notable figures throughout history including Muhammad Ali, Rudy Ray Moore, and The Sugarhill Gang were all pioneers for a fairly modern style of music called rap, usually called hip-hop. Originally trying to convey a message, rap has evolved into a medium that has the possibility and the influence to change society. Lin-Manuel instantly saw this same ability to change society in Alexander Hamilton’s writings. “To literally write verse that gets you out of your circumstances that’s about how terrible your circumstances are, I mean, that’s everyone from Jay Z and Marcy to Lil Wayne writing about Hurricane Katrina. As I was reading the book, all these hip-hop analogies couldn’t help but pop up,” said Miranda in an interview with Rolling Stone.

While on vacation to Mexico with his then girlfriend, now wife, Miranda picked up a “casual” read: Ron Chernow’s 832 page biography of Alexander Hamilton. When Hamilton was young, his father abandoned his family, his mother died of a fever, and a hurricane hit his home in St. Croix. Throughout all this heartache, Hamilton never gave up. When the citizens in his town read his writings, they sent around a plate to collect money so that they could send Hamilton to America. He wrote his way out. Lin was so blown away by Hamilton’s ability to write his was way out of poverty that his imagination started flowing with ideas. “It’s no accident that the best idea I’ve ever had in my life — perhaps maybe the best one I’ll ever have in my life — came to me on vacation,” Miranda said. “The moment my brain got a moment’s rest, ‘Hamilton’ walked into it.” Primitively, it started as a song, soon growing to a mixtape, but finally his mind started forming a story.

So Miranda reached out to Chernow to see if he would be willing to be the historical consultant for the story he was eager to tell. Not expecting this type of question, Ron thought Miranda was joking, but Miranda convinced him that he “wanted historians to believe it.” Miranda would frequently get in touch with Chernow to get very specific details to make the story more authentic, but Chernow told Miranda that not many details are available for 18th century people so a lot of the details are left to the author. Ron approved of most of the creative freedoms Miranda took. All except one. Both Chernow and Miranda remember a pivotal day in the writing process, when Chernow had been invited to listen to the actors sing through part of Act One. What Chernow saw was, in his own words, “shock[ing]”. The men playing the Founding Fathers, white men, were far from their historical counterparts. Miranda and the producer, Tommy Kail, saw no problem with this artistic decision. In fact, Kail would go on to said repeatedly, “This is the story about America then, told by America now.” Chernow, though hesitant of the idea at first, ultimately became a defender of this principled idea.

Throughout the next two years, Miranda would become involved with many different projects. He created the score for Bring It On, translated lyrics to Spanish for West Side Story, wrote a rap for Neil Patrick Harris to close the Tony Awards, and married Vanessa Nadel, all the while checking with Ron to confirm the authenticity of his story. Finally, in 2011 The Hamilton Mixtape made its debut, with Miranda as the title character, in the Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series. The audience experienced 10 numbers and were left wanting so much more.

For the duration of the writing process, Lin struggled to get the words exactly right. During an interview with Rachael Ray, Lin discusses his epitome that led to the creation of one of the iconic songs in the musical. “I was going to a friend’s house in Williamsburg and the idea came to me on the way to the party… The idea came to me midway [on the train ride]. It was like the best idea I’ve ever had for a song. I went to my friend’s party and said [with a very frazzled tone] ‘Hey. Happy birthday. I have to go,’ and finished writing the song on the way home.” Miranda now jokes that the two best songs he will ever write in his life, “Wait For It” and “The Room Where It Happens”, are the two songs that he will never sing since they are both sung by Hamilton’s long-time enemy: Aaron Burr.

Once the writing process was finalized, everything else — minus a few creative liberties — was completed, it was time to start recording. In a 60 Minutes Overtime video, 60 minutes producer Graham Messick discussed what it was like to watch the original Broadway cast of Hamilton record the album. “It also, in a funny way, gave him a deadline,” he said. “See he was changing the words right up to the day they recorded the cast album. And he wanted this cast album to be something permanent.” Because Miranda would continue to change the lyrics, they had to take precautionary measures, like printing all the lyrics out and putting them in binders, to ensure that he would not be able to change anything when it came to the day of the recording.

2016 is nearing its end and by this point, Hamilton is a world-wide phenomenon, so much so that they have started a second running in Chicago, a third running on West End in London, England, and The Hamilton Mixtape, deleted songs and remixes from the musical recorded by popular artists, is being released at the end of the year. Back in March, after close to seven years, President and First Lady Obama invited Miranda to return to the White House along with the cast of Hamilton to perform some of the hit songs from the musical. The cast performed songs such as “Alexander Hamilton” and “My Shot” in the East Room of the White House. This performance was part of an all day arts celebration called #Bam4Ham — a play on #Ham4Ham, the pre-show mini-performance done each day at the Richard Rogers Theatre. The cast got to answer questions from students in the audience, give workshops about a variety of topics, and explore the vast amount of rooms in the White House. The East Wing was filled with a diverse group of students who got to step foot into a building that not many people even have the opportunity to get close to. Then, Miranda, accompanied by a Marine Corps Band percussionist and President Obama, performed a free-style rap in the Rose Garden. President Obama held a stack of cards that each had a word relating to the government, while Miranda free-styled about the nation. “He’s throwing up some words, I’m getting to say some free-styling that you never heard,” Miranda raps. “Constitution, the POTUS, I’m free-styling, you know this.”

Even though he finished his run as Alexander Hamilton in July, Miranda isn’t through with Hamilton quiet yet. In fact, he traveled to Chicago to help train the new cast. And just like the original cast’s recording session, Miranda couldn’t stop himself from making small lyrical critiques. During the Chicago rehearsals, Miranda would have lyrics come to his head that he thought should obviously replace lyrics that were already in the show. Tommy Kail, the person in charge of directing the new cast and also a close friend of Miranda, has resorted to banishing Miranda from rehearsal to make sure he doesn’t distract or confuse any of the new cast members. “If Lin brings a new lyric, I just send him out of the room immediately,” Kail told Billboard. Even Tony, Grammy, and Emmy winning geniuses aren’t allowed to change something that they believe needs to be improved.

This whole writing process was long, tiring, and sometimes frustrating but because Miranda continued to stay dedicated to his show the world has a revolution on its hands. “What I share with Hamilton,” Miranda acknowledges, “is that I want to get as many of the ideas out of my head as possible in the time I have.” This awareness allowed Lin to really delve into Hamilton’s life and write the best and most accurate story possible, that we, the world, get to enjoy. Because of Lin, Alexander Hamilton now has his story told.