The long awaited Hamilton Mixtape features inspired-bys, remixes, and covers of the Hamilton Official Broadway Cast songs along with extra demos from the creation of the musical to the Broadway and Off-Broadway versions of the show. The project has been in progress for 2 years: Many of the references to Hamilton and its characters have been taken out. This way, the songs have become easier to relate to for non-theatre goers and others not listening to the original musical. For example, Kelly Clarkson’s rendition of “It’s Quiet Uptown” preaches to a more general form of forgiveness, rather than the specific instance of Eliza forgiving Hamilton. There are some demos that didn’t make the Broadway show, such as “Valley Forge”, which didn’t even make the Off-Broadway production. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, describes in an interview where (one of his dreams come true) with Entertainment Weekly: One of the things we always talked about with the Mixtape was giving people glimpses of songs that didn’t make the cut. In addition, some of the songs are made by artists who inspired the musical. Miranda says: The ethos of the show was, I’m inspired by this story that has to be a hip-hop story, and I’m inspired to invoke the rap gods and R&B gods that I loved. As a result, he encouraged artists to create songs that had similar themes and give them their own personal sound, like The Roots, Joell Ortiz, & Busta Rhymes’s version of “My Shot”.