Schoolhouse Hip-hop = $$$$$$$

I should immediately point out that I am a seriously biased reviewer: I loathe Broadway musicals . . . I don't even like things that satirize Broadway musicals (such as Avenue Q and Spamalot) because the music still sounds like a Broadway musical, even if the lyrics are funny . . . but lately my good friend and colleague Kevin has been obsessed with the show Hamilton, and it seems everyone else on earth has either seen Hamilton or wants to see Hamilton, and all these folks are willing to pay an inordinate amount of money to do this . . . so I decided I would give it a shot and listen to the soundtrack (that's all I could muster, I would never pay money and make plans nine months in the future for musical theater) and I was sorely disappointed; I thought that the music in Hamilton was going to shatter the chains that constrict and restrain the music of a typical Broadway musical . . . I thought it was going to have a real urban, edgy, hip-hop feel to it, but it's actually just a better-produced version of Schoolhouse Rock, didactic and preachy, with plenty of actual Broadway cheese and a tame, enunciated version of rap and R&B music that sounds like a mix between DJ Jazzy Jeff and Oklahoma . . . and it's hard not to laugh at moments that are supposed to be dramatic and powerful-- delivered in a full hip-hop style-- that end up just being silly and anecdotal . . . my favorite is in "Non-Stop":

"the plan was to write a total of twenty-five essays, the work divided by three men . . . in the end they wrote eighty-five essays, in the span of six months . . . John Jay got sick after writing five, James Madison wrote twenty-nine, Hamilton wrote the other fifty-one!"

and I fully admit this negative review might be fueled by jealousy, because Lin-Manuel Miranda actually got his historical rap-musical written and produced, while my masterpiece "Bring Da Sense," a hip-hop biopic about Thomas "Bring Da" Paine and his controversial pamphlet is still unfinished (and Method Man doesn't seem all that interested in playing the role of Paine, which is a major sticking point).