Music Review: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis combine for thrilling 'Warriors' album
The perilous journey home — it's a tale as old as "The Iliad." Now it's a dynamic concept album starring hip-hop legends, Broadway belters and, of all things, the New York subway system.
“Warriors,” built on the 1979 cult classic movie, is an inventive song cycle by “Hamilton” mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda and Pulitzer finalist Eisa Davis, an album that has deployed musical talent brilliantly to tell another story of going home, at the intersection of musical theater and popular music.
The movie — born from a book by Sol Yurick — follows the street gang the Warriors as they make their way from The Bronx to their home turf of Coney Island in Brooklyn while being hunted by rivals gangs and cops. (Check out the lyric book to have a richer experience). The subway is almost a character, the main mode of transport, acting as the city's artery.
Miranda and Davis have kept the bones of the story but made strategic changes in genders, like making the Warriors all women, played by theater vets Kenita Miller, Sasha Hutchings, Phillipa Soo, Aneesa Folds, Amber Gray, Gizel Jiménez, Jasmine Cephas Jones and Julia Harriman. They all give it an extra buzz, beautifully emotional in just a few words.
Surrounding them is an astonishing list of artists playing various parts — Ms. Lauryn Hill, Nas, Busta Rhymes, Billy Porter, Ghostface Killah, RZA, Marc Anthony, Colman Domingo, Cam’ron, Shenseea and Joshua Henry, among them. In some inspired casting, James Remar and David Patrick Kelly — both veterans of the movie — are recast here as cops.
“This is the sound of something being born,” Chris Rivers thrillingly raps at the top of the album and he has the honor of representing The Bronx. Don't you want to hear Nas repping Queens and Busta Rhymes as Brooklyn? The album is worth streaming alone just for that. Or for the chance to hear Hill sing “Can you dig it?”
Miranda and Davis offer a musical journey along with their narrative one — the sounds of salsa, ska, agro-rock, boy band, pop, old-school rap and even K-pop. Spanish and Korean mixes with the English. It’s a diverse buffet, reflecting New York.
Some of the 26 tracks are fragments, some hushed, others fully formed and some hysterical, as with “We Got You,” a seductive love song delivered by a male gang wearing cardigans. “Quiet Girls” — featuring a fierce Porter — is a feminist anthem and “A Light or Somethin'” is a gorgeous love song for our times. The three part finale is a gloriously messy, eight-minute ride through a eulogy, a struggle and then grace.
“Warriors” is a portrait of a mean, tough city with determined residents bound together by frustration with their transit system. “Takin’ a train to a boat to another train?!” the gangs sing in unison and astonishment on “I Survive the Night,” an electric opening number that’s a theatrical setting of the table.
Trains rattle, doors close — we even hear underground announcements from Bernie Wagenblast, who voices the city’s real subway system — across a rich soundscape that includes the rattling of spray paint cans and the crackling of fire.
It shares with Miranda's previous stage works — “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” — an unabashed love of New York (There’s even mentions of hot dog joint Gray’s Papaya ). The creators have said they have no plans for a stage version and you can hear why: It’s all on the album already.
The Warriors — don't get too attached to anyone in particular, just sayin' — are in many ways a metaphor for us as a nation: “All we got is us/The people who ride with us, side by side with us/We're all on the same train home.”
Take a trip with them — it's a great ride. Watch the closing doors!
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