Walter Hill’s 1979 film The Warriors, based on the 1965 novel by Sol Yurick, presents a blood-stained map of a New York City ruled by highly territorial gangs.
Warriors, a new concept album based on the same story, begins with a dancehall-tinged intro by the Jamaican singer Shenseea, before Bronx-born rapper Chris Rivers hops on the track to rep and introduce his borough. This sets the stage for the next four voices: Nas (of Queens), Cam’ron (Manhattan), Ghostface Killah and RZA (Staten Island), and Busta Rhymes (Brooklyn).
Soon after comes a jolting reminder that this is, in fact, a musical theater piece by Lin-Manuel Miranda, as a handful of Broadway favorites (Phillipa Soo, Amber Gray, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Aneesa Folds, Kenita Miller, Sasha Hutchings, Gizel Jiménez, and Julia Harriman) drop in, playing the gender-swapped titular gang.
But then, the ultimate blow to expectations: Lauryn Hill emerging as Cyrus, a soon-to-be-slain gang leader who proposes the clans drop their rivalries and take the city from the police, which they outnumber 3-1. While Miranda’s Hamilton Mixtape, released after the success of that 2015 musical, featured several hip-hop notables, never has his music sounded so, well, hard.