On October 1 – fresh off being named a MacArthur “Genius” – Lin-Manuel Miranda announced that he would be releasing a Hamilton mixtape. At that point, the soundtrack to the hit (impossibly hard to score tickets to) Broadway show was on sale, but he wanted to give fans some unreleased material, like a rap battle between Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson.
But after his whirlwind 2015, Miranda said that he needed time to recoup and would revisit the project in early 2016. Now, we finally have an update to the Hamilton mixtape, like the fact that he is partnering with Questlove, who executive produced the show’s album, to get it done. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Miranda explained that Hamilton is coming full circle now, because he initially set out to create a mixtape.
“To me, Hamilton was a hip-hop artist,” he said. “He used his words to get everywhere. He also ruined his life using those verbal abilities. I thought of this as a concept album like Jesus Christ Superstar; that was an album before it was staged as a show. It wanted to write really dense, fun lyrics like my favorite hip-hop artists did.”
Miranda thought someone else would eventually stage the show. But things worked out differently. Once the Broadway show became the monster that it did, Miranda knew he wanted Questlove involved with the album and the upcoming mixtape. Questlove revealed that Busta Rhymes, Ben Folds, Regina Spektor, Common, and Chance the Rapper are a few of the artists that will be involved in the project.