Miranda's Got A Baby Analysis

in 1996. Shakur wrote intricate, socially nuanced lyrics: Miranda particularly admired “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” a verse narrative about a twelve-year-old girl who turns to prostitution after giving birth to her molester’s child. Shakur was also extremely undiplomatic, publicly calling out rappers he hated. Miranda recognized a similar rhetorical talent in Hamilton, and a similar, fatal failure to know when enough was enough. There was extraordinary dramatic potential in Hamilton’s story: the characteristics that allowed him to rise also insured his fall. When the organizers of the White House event called, Miranda proposed a rap about Hamilton, and they said yes.
That evening in May, Miranda and the other performers—among them Esperanza Spalding, the jazz bassist and vocalist, and James Earl Jones—were introduced to the President. Miranda asked him to sign a copy of “Dreams from My Father” that he’d bought at the airport. Onstage, Miranda announced that he was working on a concept album about Hamilton—“someone I think embodies hip-hop,” he said, to general laughter. He did not mention that he had written only one song. After Miranda explained that Hamilton represented “the word’s ability to make a difference,” he launched into complex lyrics

In the opening number, Burr introduces Hamilton as a “bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman”: lyrics derived from a contemptuous description by John Adams. Burr was born to privilege—his father was the president of the college that became Princeton University, and Jonathan Edwards was his maternal grandfather—but, like Hamilton, he was orphaned at an early age, studied law, and turned to politics. In Miranda’s telling, they are negative images of each other, Hamilton’s heated recklessness contrasting with Burr’s icy caution. “Hamilton is this orphan with nothing to lose, and Burr is this orphan with everything to lose,” Miranda