Warriors (Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis album)

Warriors
Studio album by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis
Released	18 October 2024
Genre	Musical theatre, popular music
Label	Atlantic Records
Producer	Mike Elizondo
Lin-Manuel Miranda chronology
Hamilton: The German EP (2023) Warriors (2024) Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)

Warriors is a concept album by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis, inspired by the 1979 action film The Warriors.^[1] It was released on 18 October 2024 on Atlantic Records. It is executive produced by Nas, and produced by Mike Elizondo.^[2]

Miranda first saw the movie The Warriors at age four on a VHS copy that belonged to a friend's older brother. He says the story has been "on two stone tablets in my head" since then.^[3][4]

A friend, Phil Westgren, suggested the idea of a musical based on the movie to him in 2009 after In The Heights came out. Miranda initially told his friend that the idea would never work. After his first run of performing in Hamilton, he realised he'd "lowkey been thinking about" adapting The Warriors since then. In 2022, he proposed the idea of collaborating on the project to Eisa Davis, who had never seen the movie.^[3][5]

In August 2023, the New York Post was the first media outlet to report that Lin-Manuel Miranda was working on a stage musical adaptation of Sol Yurick’s novel The Warriors.^[6][7] In July 2024, it was reported that Miranda was completing the recording of a concept album for a new musical, an adaptation of the movie The Warriors.^[8]

In August 2024, the album's release date was confirmed. The New York Times said it was unclear if the album will lead to a stage musical, while the Los Angeles Times described earlier reports that the album was to be a stage production as "speculation". The New York Times noted that "Hamilton was initially conceived as a concept album, and there is a history of concept albums evolving into stage productions, from Jesus Christ Superstar to Hadestown."^[2][1] Miranda and Davis downplayed immediate plans for production following the album's release, noting at the time they do not have a theatrical producer or director attached, instead choosing to focus on the album as the main goal of the project.^[9]

Associated Press describes the album as being "at the intersection of musical theater and popular music", but notes that it touches on various genres like "a diverse buffet, reflecting New York". Billboard also describes the album as "genre-hopping".^[5][10] Michael Paulson, theater reporter at The New York Times, lists the genres it includes as "rap and hip-hop, salsa and merengue, ska and sounds from ballroom culture, R&B and funk". He adds that there are nods to K-pop ("We Got You"), and dancehall (Shenseea's vocals on "Survive the Night").^[11]

The album also includes elements of metal music for the character Luther, voiced by Kim Dracula. Miranda initially tried writing rap verses for Luther, attempting to match rhythms to the character's thinking patterns as he had done in Hamilton. He found rap sounded too methodical and organized. Eisa played Miranda the metal band Alekhine’s Gun, and they settled on this sound for its "chaotic energy".^[11][12]

Each of New York's five boroughs is represented on the album by big name rap artists. Miranda has said it was very intimidating "to write verses for some of the greatest writers we have". Davis has said that, while the raps were written specifically for each performer's own rhythms, there was still a question of whether they would be able to perform someone else's lines, as they take pride in never having been ghostwritten. Miranda explained that the key shift the performers had to make was in recognising they are playing a role, not themselves, but that they can still "bring what we love about them as emcees to the table".^[5][13]

Miranda has said that one of his proudest moments as a lyricist was getting approval from Nas for the verse written for him, based on a recording of Miranda performing the lines. In writing the verse, Miranda had wondered to himself "Do I have a Queens metaphor [Nas] hasn’t tried in his long and amazing career?", ultimately settling on a chess metaphor.^[13]

Miranda told Playbill that "The album says 'by both of us', and it really is by both of us"; Miranda and Davis are both credited as its authors without further delineation of their roles. In particular he highlights that "pretty much every Warriors bassline" started as a voice memo from Davis to him. One such voice memo appears six seconds into the album's first track as its first sung material.^[14]

Some tracks were written as an even broader collaboration with the album's band as part of jam sessions at the home of producer Mike Elizondo in Tennessee.^[14]

During the writing process, Miranda swapped early demos with Andy Samberg. Samberg was working on The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. They had met on the set of Brooklyn 99 and realized they were both working on concept albums about what Miranda describes as "weird super-niche 80s things that maybe we're the only ones who really care about". He joked on Late Night with Seth Meyers, "weirdly, Bash Brothers is the cousin of Warriors".^[15]

The album was released on 18 October 2024, with a launch party at Brooklyn's Time Out Market on 17 October. The album was played on vinyl ahead of its midnight release on streaming services. At the party, Time Out unveiled a digital magazine cover featuring a photo of Miranda and Davis in the same subway car used in the 1979 film, which is now situated in the New York Transit Museum.^[16][17]

Miranda has said that he was touched by his son Francisco's reaction to the album release: "Daddy, can we hum it at school now?" He knew he wasn't allowed to sing tracks from the album until it came out. Davis joked "He was under NDA".^[18]

DJ Lynne Pen broadcasts a message to the various gangs across the five boroughs of New York, announcing a gathering at Van Cortlandt Park organized by Cyrus of the Gramercy Riffs ("Survive the Night"). The Warriors, a gang of women from Coney Island, assemble to make the journey uptown, following instructions from Cyrus to leave all their weapons at home ("Roll Call"). At the park, the group unwind by delivering their signature rhyme together ("Warriors' Cypher"). Cyrus arrives ("Make Way For Cyrus"), and makes a public call for a truce among the gangs in the name of ensuring peace ("If You Can Count"). Though her call receives support, she is abruptly killed by Luther, a member of the Rogues, who pins the blame on the Warriors' leader Cleon—the only person to see him commit the act. Cleon orders the Warriors to flee as the Riffs attack her ("Derailed"). With their leader missing, member Swan takes charge of the group—to the annoyance of the group's fighter, Ajax—and they decide to regroup at Union Square Station before returning to the safety of their home turf of Coney Island ("Woodlawn Cemetery").

The DJ announces the breaking of the truce and that a hit has been placed on the Warriors. The Warriors narrowly avoid an attack by the Turnbull AC's of the Bronx and manage to board the train ("Leave The Bronx Alive"), but are cut off by a track fire, forcing them to continue on foot as they look for another train. Luther contacts other members of the Rogue to inform them of his deed and the plan to blame it on the Warriors ("A Track Fire And A Phone Call") and expresses to his partner Cropsy their plan to "watch the world burn" ("Going Down"). The Warriors encounter the Orphan gang, and at first convince their leader Sully to let them through by feigning weakness. Mercy, Sully's girlfriend, disrupts the proceedings by asking for Swan's vest and goading Sully into asking the same. When the Warriors refuse and the Orphans prepare to attack, Ajax and Swan throw a Molotov cocktail and scare them off ("Orphan Town"). Mercy, enamored with the Warriors' bravery, decides to leave the Orphans to follow them ("Call Me Mercy"). Meanwhile, the Riffs interrogate Cleon about Cyrus' death. Cleon proclaims her innocence and convinces the new leader Masai to let her help them track down the real killer ("Still Breathin'").

The House of Hurricanes, a ballroom group from Spanish Harlem, force the Warriors off the train with the accusation that they killed Cyrus. Believing their innocence, however, they choose not to carry out the hit and instead warn them that running only makes them look guilty, and that they will need to fight on the streets in order to truly survive ("Quiet Girls"). The Warriors make a stop at Gray's Papaya, despite Swan's urging that they need to focus on getting home. They are soon attacked by the Baseball Furies, a West Side gang ("Outside Gray's Papaya"). Ajax, tired of running, rallies the Warriors to fight off the Furies in Riverside Park ("Sick of Runnin'"). The women are solicited by a man in the park. While they try to ignore him, Ajax decides to take out her aggression and attacks him. The man handcuffs her, revealing himself as an undercover cop, and the rest of the Warriors flee as Ajax fights off the reinforcements, becoming separated in the process ("The Park at Night"). Luther and Cropsy learn about Ajax's fate and mock the group's plight ("Luther Interlude").

The Warriors, minus a missing Swan and Mercy, arrive at Union Square. There they encounter the Bizzies, a cardigan-wearing all-male gang ("Cardigans"), who claim to be sympathetic to their plight and offer them shelter at their apartment. Cochise, Cowgirl, and Fox are easily seduced, while Rembrandt is suspicious ("We Got You"). While hiding in a subway tunnel, Mercy begs Swan to make her a Warrior. The two slowly fall for each other ("A Light Or Somethin'"). As the Bizzies seduce the Warriors at their East Village apartment, Rembrandt figures out they are planning an ambush and manages to get everyone out alive ("We Got You (Reprise)"). Cleon convinces the Riffs that she can identify Cyrus's killer, and that he will likely be found on Coney Island ("Somewhere In the City"). Swan and Mercy reunite with the rest of the group at Union Square Station, but their attempt to board a train to Coney Island is interrupted by an encounter with the police. Fox, the group's youngest and otherwise quietest member distracts the police captain by instigating a fight on the platform, preventing him from telling the conductor to stop the train. The brawl allows the rest of the group to escape, but as the others watch helplessly through the window of their car, Fox is thrown off the platform into the path of an oncoming train, killing her ("Reunion Square").

The Warriors, shocked at Fox's death, ride the train back to Coney Island in silence. As the DJ describes the inner lives of the other passengers riding the same train, Mercy and Swan share their first kiss ("Same Train Home"). Upon arrival at Coney Island, the group eulogizes their lost members, and ceremonially induct Mercy into the group. In the distance, they spot Luther approach them in a hearse, taunting them ("Finale Part I: The Wonder Wheel"). With Swan leading, they draw him to the beach, where Swan challenges him to a one-on-one fight. Luther pompously takes the challenge and draws his gun, but Swan disarms him: the cowardly Rogues abandon their leader and flee. The Riffs arrive, and Cleon identifies Luther as Cyrus's killer to Masai. Masai commends the Warriors for their bravery before the Riffs descend on Luther ("Finale Part II: The Coney Island Shore"). Cleon reunites with the Warriors, and the group expresses their hope that one day Cyrus's dream will be fulfilled and the streets of the city will be at peace ("Finale Part III: When We All Come Home Alive").

Miranda told Fast Company that approaching this project as an album, rather than a show, allowed him to work with artists he wouldn't otherwise be able to. He explained that some of his "dream collaborators" would never commit to a Broadway schedule of performing eight times a week, but could spend a couple of days in a studio.^[4]

This approach also allowed Miranda and Davis to focus solely on the music. Miranda told Playbill, "We got to free ourselves from thinking about how they’re going to stage it [...] Not our problem. Our job was to just musicalize it to the best of our ability". Logan Culwell-Block, writing for Playbill, comments that this might be especially helpful given that various aspects of the Warriors story, such as the fight sequences and numerous location changes, are not things that musicals on traditional proscenium stages are known for doing well.^[14]

Miranda describes gender-flipping the characters of The Warriors as being key to him understanding how his adaptation could be interesting to write. He told the Associated Press that if the warriors are women "at every point, it complicates [the narrative] in a really compelling way". In the same interview, Davis adds, "I think that it’s just so crucial to think about this - it’s a group of women that no one believes. Everyone is accusing you falsely, [...] and what is it that you do? What is it that you try?"^[3]

The 2014-2015 misogynistic online harassment campaign Gamergate was part of Miranda's inspiration for the gender-flip. He likens the campaign's doxing of women to Luther's actions in The Warriors: "Luther shoots Cyrus, turns to the Warriors and goes 'they did it'. Then they have to deal with the consequences for the rest of the night, with everyone wanting to kill them."^[4][3] Davis also found inspiration in the 1971 Hoe Avenue peace meeting, a real inter-gang truce that took place in the Bronx: Davis was struck that "The women who were at that peace meeting were made to sit in the back, and the gangs that were all femme were not even allowed to come into that meeting. So in some ways, I feel like this is a vindication for them.”^[9]

Eisa Davis describes the album as a "love letter to the origins of hip-hop". She again connected the story of Warriors to the Hoe Avenue peace meeting, which she says enabled "the cultural conditions that created hip-hop officially in 1973. There was a shift from being a gang that’s at war with other gangs to being a crew that is going to battle other crews as MCs, as great dancers, as graffiti writers, as DJs". When she first watched the 1979 movie with Miranda, she only knew it through how it has been referenced in hip-hop.^[13] Vulture says that the movie's "unforgettable lines echo across hip-hop history". It gives examples like the line "I be like, 'Warriors, come out and play'", rapped by Ol' Dirty Bastard on Wu-Tang Clan's debut album, and the video for California Love by 2Pac featuring Dr. Dre starting with "Can you dig it?" as spoken by Cyrus.^[19]

Miranda describes producer Mike Elizondo as his and Davis' "third collaborator". They spent two weeks at a studio in Nashville recording the album. Miranda said of the process "If you're a musical theatre writer, the only time you're in the studio is when you're making the cast album of the stage show. To get to be in Nashville for two weeks with Mike's favorite musicians and figuring out what these tracks sounded like [felt like] indulgence as a musical theatre writer to just really focus on the songs and how they sound and not worry about staging".^[4]

Lauryn Hill's vocals were recorded separately. Aneesa Folds recorded a demo vocal on the track, which was sent to Hill. Miranda subsequently received a Dropbox link in a text message from Hill's management with her vocals. He was on a photo shoot when he received the link, and immediately went to the changing room to listen to the song.^[4]

Miranda recorded the voices of both of his sons when they would not leave him to work on the album at their home. His six-year-old son Francisco gave a 20-second scream, which is used in a loop with reverb on "Derailed". Miranda describes the scream as providing "the harmonic backbone of the track". His nine-year-old son Sebastian whispers "run" at the end of the same track.^[18] Davis and Miranda also contributed vocals: a voice memo Davis created during the writing period is used as a horn line in the opening song, with Davis also having a spoken line later in the album; Miranda claims his voice can also be briefly heard at one point, although he remains coy on where.^[9]

Featured on the album are:^[20][3][21]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
The Guardian	[22]
Financial Times	[23]

In reference to the album's gender-flip, a Financial Times review asks whether the original "macho flick" has been "put in a wokehold". It concludes that it has been, but to good effect. It notes that the gang violence of the original was largely "cartoon fantasy", and so the story's "transformation into a girl-power parable is hardly a leap". The review says that the role of the radio DJ - "an ancient Greek chorus in the film" - is used less well in Warriors, but praises "droll embellishments" like "the cringy ska-pop sung by dweebish loser gang the Orphans".^[23]

The Guardian's review notes that "one of the album’s joys is its unexpected pairings, especially how musical theatre stars are matched with acts from other genres", citing Alex Boniello and Kim Dracula's duet on "Going Down" in particular. The "poignant yearning" of Julia Harriman's performance on "Call Me Mercy" is also called out as a highlight that gives the character a larger role than in the film, where she's "reduced to a love interest". The use of lines from the screenplay in the lyrics of "If You Can Count" is praised for building them "into something much more resonant".^[22]

The headline of Carl Wilson's review at Slate states that the album "pulls too many punches". Wilson criticises the action scenes for lacking a sense of menace, writing that the album seems "sealed inside a nicey-nice musical-theater bubble". He gives examples of the Warriors' easy acceptance of Swan and Mercy’s "queer love", and the fact that the story only features a single gun, which "doesn’t feel like it has anything to do with gang life now". He acknowledges that Miranda and Davis' storytelling feels restricted by 2024 politics, "as if there’s so much they cannot say, so much that many people really feel we can’t discuss right now lest it be seized on and misused in bad faith".^[24]

Both Slate and Vulture note that the album's big name hip-hop stars don't appear beyond the first track, the latter saying that spreading out these cameos may have helped avoid the album being seen as "nuclear-grade cringe" by rap fans. Similarly, Slate said that Miranda benefits from the second hand credibility these artists bring because his version of hip-hop "smacks of corniness to those who aren’t already musical-theater fans".^[24][19]

Vulture says that Warriors showcases many of Miranda's positive traits as a songwriter, but also less positive "quirks" that are "sources of the deserved gripes against him". According to Vulture, Miranda is "plagued by" "occasional G-rated schmaltz", plus tends towards an "overbearing maximalism and good-intentioned liberalism", which can sometimes "wring an uplifting takeaway from an objectively bleak situation".^[19]

The album debuted at number 1 on Billboard's compilation albums chart, and reached the top 25 in the Top Current Album Sales and Top Album Sales charts.^[25] In the UK, the album peaked at 29 on the Official Charts Company's compilation albums chart, and at 34 on the album downloads chart, spending a week in the top 40 of each.^[26]

• Official website