A little over a year ago, I wrote an article called “Rap In Musicals, And How We‘ve Been Getting It Wrong.“ In it, I made two major arguments: one, that rap was as well-suited to musicals as pen to page, and two, that most uses of rap in the musical theatre thus far had largely failed to realize the extraordinary synergistic potential of these two forms. I then went on to list techniques in the musical theatre that rap would complement perfectly.
I could reiterate all of my points here, but I no longer have to. I can now just point to Hamilton and say, “yeah, basically that.“ Nonetheless, let‘s briefly run through these ideas and examine them in the context of Broadway‘s latest runaway smash.
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Rap In Musicals, And How We’ve Been Getting It Wrong
I think that we have been approaching the use of rap in the musical theatre the wrong way all this time. In the paragraphs that follow, I hope to briefly convince you of two things…
1. That rap is well-suited to integration in a musical theatre idiom, and
2. That some fairly basic misconceptions about the dramatic strengths of rap have prevented this integration from being carried out in a manner and to a degree that matches its potential.