Welcome back to Crate Digging, our recurring feature that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis talk through concept albums that have inspired them over the years, including the time they spent working on their new project, Warriors.
Lin-Manuel Miranda surrounds himself with people who are ready to keep pushing musical theater forward. Miranda, the creator of Hamilton and the person responsible for the Moana song you still can’t get out of your head, knew he needed someone with a distinct perspective to bring his next project to life.
“I think that I’m always excited by musicals whose scores feel like they’re in conversation with the world,” the Grammy and Tony-winner explains. “I can tell when I hear a score by someone who only listens to musicals, as opposed to any other genre of music. But the scores that excite me are the things like American Idiot and Sarafina!. As long as it’s in conversation with music and our actual world, I’m excited by it.”
Miranda is chatting over video alongside his collaborator, the playwright, actor, and songwriter Eisa Davis, with whom he developed Warriors, a concept album inspired by the 1979 movie of the same name. Anyone familiar with the cult classic who tunes into the LP will find a story that’s been flipped on its head, gender-swapped and injected with an amalgam of genres under executive production from Nas.
It’s a star-studded affair: Lauryn Hill, Ghostface Killah, and RZA interweave with Broadway figures like Amber Gray, Phillipa Soo, Joshua Henry, and Jasmine Cephas Jones; elsewhere, the album features hardcore artist Kim Dracula, pop heartthrob Stephen Sanchez, and actor Colman Domingo, and that’s still not all. It’s a lot to take in — but it certainly doesn’t sound like it was written by people who only listen to musical theatre.
In fact, Davis and Miranda not only display a wide range in the albums they select as inspirational to the ethos of Warriors, but they also have the sort of creative overlap that makes such an ambitious undertaking make a little more sense. They are two people who absolutely love art that pushes boundaries and expands the worldview of the listener.