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My Year With Lin-Manuel Miranda; or, How to Find a Hip Hop Icon in Ron Chernow's Hamilton

Lin-Manuel Miranda was reading Ron Chernow’s Hamilton on vacation, goes the fable of the year, when he was struck with inspiration. Later, at the first public performance of a song from his musical, he told his audience at the White House that Alexander Hamilton was “someone I think embodies hip-hop.”

Should You Listen to the Soundtrack to Hamilton If You Have Not Seen Hamilton?

The first musical soundtrack I ever heard was for A Chorus Line, at age seven or eight, long before I even knew what Broadway was, or meant. My mom had the original cast recording, from 1975, and apparently I spent enough time unsupervised to have nabbed it from her cassette collection, because that shit was dirty,…