#NerdMusicMonday: The Hamilton Mixtape

Welcome to #NerdMusicMonday, where we feature some of the greatest geek-inspired music to start your week on the right note. We also review geek-inspired music things that we see floating around the Internet, for better or worse.

Hey there, Hamilton fan! Last weekend saw the release of the much-awaited Hamilton Mixtape. If you want to get more mashups of hip-hop and the American founding fathers, here’s your chance to disappear for a couple of hours in the phat beats produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda and The Roots.

Covering the songs are some of the show’s inspirations (Queen Latifah, Busta Rhymes, Ashanti, Ja Rule, and Alicia Keys, to name a few), and as a bonus, Miranda added few demos of tracks that didn’t make it to the musical. Cabinet Battle #3, in particular, deals with slavery and further stirs up the rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson.

I felt a bit of disappointment when the first few tracks dropped, as I felt that they didn’t quite capture the feelings of the originals. Now that the entire mixtape is out and I can listen to the songs in their context, I thought that they were pretty good cover versions. Except for Jimmy Fallon’s version of You’ll Be Back. Ugh.

Highlights include:

• Wait For It by Usher
• My Shot by The Roots
• Helpless by Ashanti and Ja Rule
• Immigrants (We Get The Job Done) by K’NAAN
• History Has Its Eyes On You by John Legend
• Dear Theodosia (Reprise) by Chance The Rapper & Francis and the Lights

You can stream the entire mixtape here:

Do you make your own geeky tunes? Do you want to be featured on What’s A Geek’s #NerdMusicMonday? Let us know about your music by sending us an email here!