Indeed, it occasionally dispenses with the latter genres altogether in favour of razzle-dazzle showstoppers (“The Story of Tonight”, “It’s Quiet Uptown”) or, in the case of “You’ll Be Back”, the kind of 60s sunshine pop exemplified by the Turtles’ “ Happy Together”. It’s resolutely a product of Broadway, from the dexterous vocals with their impeccably clear enunciation – no rapper in history has ever rapped the way the cast of Hamilton rap – to the music, which clearly has as much to do with showtunes as hip-hop or R&B.
In a sense that feels surprising, because the one thing the Hamilton cast album isn’t is a hip-hop album: no one in the mood to hear Joey Badass or Lil Uzi Vert is ever going to pause, reconsider and put Hamilton on instead. Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones in Hamilton at the Richard Rodgers theatre in New York. And in the US, at least, that’s how the album appears to have been taken: it has sold around 1m copies, has topped the hip-hop chart and the Broadway chart and was as warmly received by rap fans as aficionados of the Great White Way. It suggested that its makers intended the Hamilton album to function as a standalone work, rather than a souvenir of a night out. It was recorded with far more care and attention to detail than is usual – they tend to be knocked off in a single recording session, but the production of Hamilton was overseen by Questlove and Black Thought of the Roots, who are clearly no one’s idea of fly-by-night bandwagon jumpers hell bent on sanitising hip-hop for the Andrew Lloyd Webber massive. In theory at least, it sounds like the kind of thing a teacher of the call-me-by-my-first-name variety might drag their class along to see.īut then the success of the Hamilton cast album, or rather the nature of its success, suggests that might be a hasty judgment. The spectre of something obviously put together with the best intentions but potentially agonising looms over the whole concept of Hamilton, earnest historical story and all. A voice for the underprivileged, it is seldom improved by gentrification. Of all the genres in pop, hip-hop is the one most obviously from the street.
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