The cameos dont stop there.
Colman Domingo also appears, as do James Remar and David Patrick Kelly from the original movie.
In its current form, the album similarly lives in an impossible imagination.
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis
Itd usually be 59th street, but thered be a couple hanging on till 125th Street.
Why is that not there in the rest of the film?
In adapting it, I wanted to see if we could keep that dream alive throughout the record.
Photo: Emilio Madrid
[The Ghetto Brothers] became a music group more than a gang, Davis continues.
That was something we were really looking to: how this gang culture leads to the birth of hip-hop.
If he hadnt texted Miranda during a visit to New York, maybe he wouldnt have asked.
Photo: Emilio Madrid
The challenge, then, was: how do you write a verse good enough for Nas?
When the chess phrase Queens Gambit came into his head, gears started turning.
If he had, Id have to go back to the drawing board.
Id found the one Queens metaphor he had not yet used.
Getting other rap legends to appear on the album became easy once Nas had agreed to executive produce.
As Elizondo says, Lins clout goes a long way.
The fact that it was a full-length concept album felt like something exciting to be a part of.
Still, a few rappers were hesitant to let other writers draft their lines.
These are not Cam’ron lyrics, this is Cam’ron playing Manhattan and embodying the spirit of the Manhattan crews.
It really required a mental shift for a lot of these emcees to play these roles.
A year later, we got a Dropbox file with all these vocals in it, he says.
Yeah, that was a mystery, Elizondo says of why she ultimately joined the project.
I have no idea where she was in the world when she recorded her parts.
We were just sent off the tracks and hoped that at some point we would hear back.
