Hamilton: What The Musical’s First Line Really Means

The opening line of Hamilton summarizes the subject’s life story and functions as introductory exposition, but the true meaning is much more complex. Since debuting in 2015, the historical musical has gained a massive international fanbase, primarily due to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s unique creative approach for telling the story of an American founding father, Alexander Hamilton. Some facts are tweaked for dramatic purposes, and the character dialogue consists primarily of rapping or traditional singing, but the overall sentiment captures the legacy of both the Hamilton subject and the origins of hip-hop music.

Miranda initially conceived Hamilton as “mixtape” project, which conceptually links to ’80s hip-hop culture. Artists recorded their work on audio cassette tapes, and used them as promotional materials for their work. Mixtapes were also used as party-starters, and directly correlated with street culture, which is indeed a prevalent theme in Miranda’s Hamilton predecessor, In the Heights. During the past two decades, mixtape productions have evolved with technological advancements. Artists eventually turned to compact discs for marketing purposes, and now mixtapes are released digitally. The modern rapper Drake actually began his career as a popular mixtape artist before signing a deal with Universal Motown Records. With a mixtape, it’s always crucial to begin strong. In that sense, Hamilton succeeds.

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When Drake’s debut studio album released in June 2010, Miranda was in the process of developing “The Hamilton Mixtape.” He’d read Ron Chernow’s 2004 book Alexander Hamilton, and began adapting the story with a hip-hop aesthetic. In fact, Miranda teased the project way back in May 2019 on a rather big platform, as he performed the opening number “Alexander Hamilton” for Barack Obama and guests at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music and the Spoken Word. Miranda explained the hip-hop premise to a somewhat-confused audience, and then performed the song that would ultimately become Hamilton’s introductory track when the play debuted over five years later. In 2015, Miranda’s Hamilton annotations (via Vanity Fair) revealed that his opening line about Alexander’s life serves as a metaphor for the primary aesthetic influence, hip-hop:

“With this being the first line of the show, I wanted to outline the improbability of this situation. This is the story of hip-­hop. It’s Tupac’s image of the rose that grew out of some concrete. It’s Richard Pryor growing up in a brothel, to being one of the greatest comedic geniuses of our time.”

With the first line in Hamilton‘s opening song, Miranda essentially pays homage to his creative inspirations while acknowledging his own family history and backstory. Just as Alexander emigrated to America from the Caribbean as a teenager, Miranda’s father did the same thing, but from Puerto Rico. Importantly, Hamilton’s creator is a child of the ’80s, born just two weeks into the decade, and raised in a city that’s the epicenter of hip-hop, New York City. Miranda’s annotations cite Richard Pryor, who revolutionized the stand-up comedy scene during the ’70s and became a proper mainstream movie star by the early ’80s.

Miranda also mentions Tupac Shakur, who paid his industry dues in the ’80s before emerging as one of the most important voices of the hip-hop community during the early to mid ’90s. Both Shakur and Pryor overcame the odds and persevered by staying true to their beliefs. So, if Hamilton is the story of a determined founding father, the introductory line serves as an ode to strong and determined males who influenced Miranda’s perspective, both creatively and philosophically:

“Real genius, like Hamiltonian genius, will survive its circumstances. This type of genius is simply undeniable. And it’s an immigrant story, too, which reminded me of my father, who came here at 18 from Puerto Rico, not speaking a word of English and selling newspapers.”

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Q.V. Hough
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Q.V. Hough is a senior writer at Screen Rant. He’s also the founding editor at Vague Visages, and has contributed to RogerEbert.com and Fandor.

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