Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis on Their New Concept Album “Warriors”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And next, reimagining a cult classic movie 45 years after its release. The “Warriors” is getting the musical treatment from “Hamilton” creator Lin- Manuel Miranda. The Broadway legend has teamed up with playwright Eisa Davis to create “Warriors,” a concept album, which brings together a star- studded roster of musicians from Lauryn Hill to Marc Anthony, all to honor the 1979 thriller that follows a New York City gang on their journey from the Bronx to Coney Island. The pair joined Hari Sreenivasan to discuss their love letter to the and its lasting legacy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Lin- Manuel Miranda, Eisa Davis, thank you both for joining us. Lin, people who are probably familiar with you from “Hamilton,” and they’re going to say, what’s “The Warriors”? And when I try to describe the plot to people, they’re like, this can’t be real. So, you know, this was a roadmap of New York for you at a certain time. But for people who haven’t watched it, what is this?

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA, CO-CREATOR, “WARRIORS”: Yes, you know, I think everyone has that movie they saw when they were growing up and then they also have the movie they saw without their parents’ permission growing up. And “Warriors” was that movie for me. You know, it’s been a touchstone for hip hop culture and New Yorkers, because it’s such a snapshot of 1979 New York. It’s about, you know, all the gangs in the city going to a peace summit and truce in the South Bronx. The charismatic leader who calls that truce is assassinated after a really impassioned speech. The assassin blames the Warriors who are from Coney Island, and they got to fight their way from the Bronx to Coney Island, which every New Yorker knows is quite a journey.

SREENIVASAN: When you watch that movie, I mean, there are certain things that maybe flew in the ’70s that wouldn’t fly anymore. There are lots of lines that are very misogynist, very homophobic in the original movie, and you decided to flip the script.

MIRANDA: Yes. I mean, I think that it’s a very aggro movie. It’s a very testosterone laid movie, and it’s a very 1979 movie. And for me, you know, I think what artists do is, we try to connect the dots no one else has connected yet. I think that’s what our brains do naturally. When Gamergate was unfolding, I remember — and people were doxing innocent women and saying, here’s their home address. Go get them. Go do what you will with this information. I connected the dot. I thought, that’s such a Luther act. You know, Luther, in the movie, shoots Cyrus, points at another gang and says, they did it. And then, they’re left to fend for themselves for the rest of the movie. And so, just connecting those two dots flipped the gender of the “Warriors” for me and it also complicated every plot point, every subsequent plot point for me, like, oh, well, if the Warriors are women, how would they deal with this scenario? How would they deal with this undercover cop? And so, it did two things. One, I think we carve out our own lane. This album is very much a love letter to that movie, but it will also never be confused with that movie as a result of our decisions. And I think it allows us to find fresh terrain in our adaptation. I think in so many adaptations of work when they’re very, very faithful, you either meet the standard of the original film or you don’t. But when you change key things, you know, both the newcomer and the fan of the original don’t know where it’s headed, and that’s very exciting to me as an artist.

SREENIVASAN: Eisa, this writing partnership, I mean, explain how that sort of artistic creation works. I mean, what do you do? Do you just like record something, text it back and forth to each other?

EISA DAVIS, WARRIORS” CO-CREATOR: You actually — yes, you got it on the nose. I mean, that was one of the ways that we were working together, is that, you know, I would like sing some, you know, bass lines or like sit at the piano and record some chords, progressions and just send voice memos to Lin and say, you know, could this fit into the pot. You know, just providing all kinds of raw ideas, whether they were musical or whether textual, whether they were structural, and just sort of saying, let’s see, you know, how we can just keep exploring every possibility. Again, will be both reverent to the film and also irreverent to it, you know, and do what it is that we need to do in order to get at these ideas, these larger ideas around representation and around the cultural purpose, you know, of sound being born. So, it was really amazing. We got to sit at the drama bookshop and just throw ideas back and forth. And we did some retreats together. We actually did the very journey that the Warriors take, where we went all the way up to the Bronx. It’s all the way up for me because I live in Brooklyn. It’s closer for Lin. We went to Portland Park. And we went through — walked through to Woodlawn Cemetery and then found the train, made our way back down to the Upper West Side and, you know, Gray’s Papaya and the Riverside Park, where the Furies are, went down to Union Square, went down to Hoyt and Schermerhorn, where they shot a lot of the subway scenes in the film, and then made it to Coney by sunset. So, that was our method experience.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

DAVIS: But, you know, the whole process has just been so thrilling. And he’s an amazing collaborator and artist and person.

SREENIVASAN: So, Lin, your success also gets you access to a very nice Rolodex. People return your phone calls and it looks like, you know, you had anybody you wanted. You had emcees representing different boroughs here. I mean, this is an all-star list. Chris Rivers for the Bronx. Nas for Queens. Cameron for Manhattan. Ghostface Killah and RZA for Staten Island. Busta Rhymes for Brooklyn. How did you get in touch with these people and was it easy? I mean, especially Lauryn Hill. I mean, tell us that story.

MIRANDA: Well, first of all, you’re very kind, but even my Rolodex isn’t that good. I think I want to give a lot of credit to our executive producer, Nas. I had been talking to him around — last year, around the events of Hip Hop 50. He was really one of the key organizers in a lot of the amazing events celebrating Hip Hop’s 50th anniversary. And he and I were talking about him kind of developing a one-man show around the — his incredible catalog of music. And offhandedly, he said, what else are you working on? And I said, oh, I’m writing a Warriors concept album with Eisa Davis, and his eyes popped out of his head and he said, “Warriors,” that’s my favorite movie. And so, his buy in — because he just really wanted to see it exist, really opened a lot of doors for us, particularly within the hip hop community and understanding we’re looking to sort of create our best sonic love letter to this movie that hip hop culture loves. And then, you know, there are the folks that, you know, are not necessarily stars yet, but we want to be like a lot of the women playing our Warriors were really friends of ours. We asked them to come in and do demos of our material. And then there was such a chemistry and magic happening in the studio that we said, we’re not going to top this, we’re not going to top whatever’s happening here. And so, they kind of fell into the snowball as it rolled down the hill.

SREENIVASAN: So, Lin, how do you figure out, like, what kind of song and vibe you’re going for? Because in the movie, there’s these very, very different gangs. I mean, they’re, like, costumed. It’s sort of very theatrical.

MIRANDA: Very stylized, yes.

SREENIVASAN: You know, so it’s — I mean, there’s certainly a point and an intention that the director had with doing what they did at that time. But, like, now, here you are reinterpreting it and thinking about, like, what’s the vibe that this group would have? I mean, clearly, like, there was no K- pop in 1979. But here’s — there’s a sample kind of in your work here. But how did your brain say, OK, this sounds a little metal to me, this sounds a little bit of R&B, this certainly is hip hop.

MIRANDA: The most fun we had, was figuring out what is the tempo, what is the genre of this gang. When we talked about Luther, before Eisa even came aboard, when I was just brainstorming, I had written a couple of rap verses for Luther, the antagonist of the film, but the thinking felt too ordered. I was like to rhyme like this makes you — gives us a clue that you have a premeditated mind. And then, Eisa had a great — Eisa played me a metal band that she was friends with the lead singer. And as soon as I heard the screamo, I was like, I can feel my Puerto Rican grandmothers in heaven, like, crossing themselves on my behalf. This is such virtuosic chaos. This is the sound of Luther.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRANDA: And you alluded to the K-rap in it, again, the gender flit makes everything more interesting to write about. So, in the movie, they’re the Lizzies. The boys are exhausted when they’re the Warriors. They see these pretty girls. They go, oh, pretty girls. And they follow them. So, we had real conversations about, all right, these women have been running from men trying to kill them all night. Why would they trust these men? And the answer we landed on is, we’re going to create the most beautiful, unthreatening boy band of all time. But not just any boy band, we want to span the sounds from New Edition through Stray Kids in 2024.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRANDA: And so, you’ve got a — you know Josh Henry channeling his best Boyz to Men. You’ve got Stephen Sanchez channeling his best. Justin Timberlake pick your favorite, you know, sweet white boy from the early ’90s. And then you’ve got Daniel Jikal representing K-rap and absolutely breaking it down, and with lyrics by our friend Helen Park. So, it was content dictates form. Each challenge sort of meant we had to kind of rise to that occasion in terms of various genre.

SREENIVASAN: There is something throughout the film, you know, you see these repeated shots of the subway, and even in the album, we hear those sounds, we even hear the actual voice of the New York subways is doing that voiceover during this. And I’m wondering like, why do you think it would be relevant today for an audience that’s living in 2024 and hearing this story?

DAVIS: I think it goes back to the way that I wanted to look at the film from this 2024 perspective. And I just think that the whole concept of coming together as a community organization, which is an alternative way to look at a game, and coming together and realizing that there actually isn’t any need for the kind of violence that is there between these community organizations. And that there’s a way to strive for, come up with a kind of peace. And that’s truly important to me right now in this world that we live in, to find a way, to do our very best to find a way. And I’m very interested in women’s leadership. I mean, that was another huge aspect of how we were approaching this. You know, how do women work together? And what kind of peace can a woman create from that charismatic pedestal, right? And so, yes, I mean, that’s really the heart of it for me. And also, just making sure that everyone is heard. I mean, we just did our best to try to voice all of these different New York’s, you know, you mentioned like the K-pop that’s there, right? And the — there’s a group called the Hurricanes, the House of Hurricane, right? And that’s this queer and trans group, right, that’s there. So, having the Turnbull A.C.s, which are like, you know, these fierce Puerto Ricans in the Bronx, just making sure that everyone has a seat at the table, even if, you know, it’s one of strife in this story that we ultimately can find a place where everyone can live. And that is, I think, actually in the culture of hip hop. I mean, that’s something that we allude to in this, which is that real-life gang truce that happened in 1971 leads to the birth of hip hop in 1973 in a lot of ways. And that those gangs become crews that then battle against each other with their art as opposed to with knives or with weapons. And that’s something that was important to me and I think something that is really great for us to look back at from this vantage point.

SREENIVASAN: Eisa, our audience might not know that, you know, art and activism have been kind of central to some of your work. In 2009, you did Angela’s mixtape, and this is a reference to a very famous aunt that you have, Angela Davis. What’s the role right now of an artist, maybe a role and responsibility, I guess, as you see yourself in these pretty heavy times?

DAVIS: Well, I think a lot about how — what art does, is it gives us kind of a — like it tells us how we are supposed to expect life to be, you know. It creates our notions of what it is that we haven’t yet experienced. And that’s where, I think, the responsibility comes in. Because, of course, I want us, as artists, to be free to do whatever we want to do. And I think we also have to understand where systemic and structural injustices have occurred and continue to occur. And so, to play into some of those stereotypes, I think, is irresponsible if you’re not doing it in a very conscious, purposeful way, right? That there has to be some kind of critical engagement with where it is that we are as a society that we can actually dream new ways of being together through the art. My aunt talks about that all the time, about cultural work being a prong of what it is that we’re trying to do when it comes to achieving social change. And so, I would never say that an artist has any duty to, you know, say anything that it does not come, you know, full bore from their imagination. There has to be that freedom at all times. And I also know that there can be a laziness, sort of an inertia and there can just be a re-inscribing of all of these very harmful notions just because you wanted to tell a story that entertains a previous version of what we thought our reality was. We get to create new realities. We get to create new worlds. That’s what I try to do and I know that’s what Lin tries to do as well.

SREENIVASAN: Lin, you’ve got a set of lyrics in there, kind of near the end, it says, we’re on the same train home. And it’s an interesting idea. You know, if you just want to expand a little bit, maybe give us a couple of those lyrics and why in these incredibly divisive times I wish more people could hear that now.

MIRANDA: Yes. Again, it’s wonderful when you find something in the work you’re adapting that resonates so deeply with you. My favorite scene in the “Warriors” is this wordless moment that Walter Hill shot. Where, you know, the Warriors have finally made that last train that goes all the way to Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island. They’re dead tired and asleep. And this pair of couples come on in kind of disco wear and they’re having the time of their lives. And you can — and it’s very clear they live in a completely different New York than the New York we’ve been watching for the past 80 minutes. And they assess each other. And there’s this wordless moment, and Mercy, who has been traveling with the Warriors, starts to feel small. And Swan grabs her arm and, you know, basically says, assert your dignity. Like, you belong on this train too. And it — there is no dialogue in it. And so, the challenge for us became, how do we narrate a wordless sequence on an audio album? And so, wrote the song called “Same Train Home,” which I think just — it’s such a distillation of everything I love about the city, which is that we all come from all walks of life to be here. I think everyone — if you grew up here, like, you’re figuring out how to be yourself here and find your New York. If you’ve come from somewhere else, you’ve come here to become yourself. And we all share that same subway and we all managed to live mostly in peace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRANDA: What I love about New York, and why I could never, you know, move to places where you have to drive everywhere, is that I am in communion with New York by virtue of the public transit system all the time. And I think, you know, I love that about our city and I love that — and that — and we all share struggles even though it may not seem like that on the surface.

SREENIVASAN: Eisa Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda, thank you both for joining us.

MIRANDA: Thank you.

DAVIS: Thank you.