Wrote My Way Out Lyrics – The Hamilton Mixtape

Song Overview

“Wrote My Way Out” is the third cut on The Hamilton Mixtape, released as an advance single on November 18 2016 — two weeks before the full compilation bowed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Built around the piano motif and titular refrain from “Hurricane,” the Broadway show-stopper in Hamilton, the new version splices four vantage points: Nas, Dave East, Aloe Blacc, and Lin-Manuel Miranda himself. Producer !llmind lets the sample float above gritty boom-bap drums, making room for autobiographical bars that treat writing not as pastime but lifeline.

Personal Review

I was on deadline the first time I hit play, headphones half-broken, coffee gone cold. Yet the lyrics snapped me upright: a quartet of survivors writing escape routes onto loose-leaf. Nas punches through memories of Queensbridge hallways crawling with mice; Dave East paints ten-speed bikes and courtroom benches; Miranda rewinds to childhood beat-downs; Aloe Blacc soars over it all, gospel-tinged. The groove simmers at 92 BPM — head-nod territory — but the emotion smolders hotter. Key takeaway? The pen can bulldoze walls.

Song Meaning and Annotations

The track is less a remix than a relay race. Alexander Hamilton’s hurricane letter becomes a metaphorical baton — passed from 18th-century St. Croix to 21st-century New York City.

The production opens sparse: looped piano, faint vinyl hiss. Aloe Blacc’s hook enters like a lighthouse beam:

“I had no foundation / No friends and no family to catch my fall… I picked up a pen and I wrote my way out.”

That sets the dramatic stakes. Each emcee answers with lived evidence — a genre-blend of East-Coast boom-bap, mixtape soul, and Broadway leitmotif. Emotionally the arc runs hopeful — hard-won — triumphant.

Culturally the song nods to hip-hop’s bootstrap mythology. Constance Grady’s Vox essay framed it this way: “Hamilton’s ability to write his way out... is the archetypal hip-hop story.”

Historical touch-points abound: Reagan-era housing, Puerto Rican diaspora, Jonathan Larson’s rent cheque. The references tether personal stories to larger socio-economic storms, mirroring Hamilton’s own climb.

Verse Highlights

Verse 1 (Nas)

Nas likens himself to an “architect” scripting GPS code; the metaphor turns rap verses into urban planning — mapping exits from poverty.

Chorus

Aloe Blacc’s gospel vibrato lifts the sample, doubling Hamilton’s phrase into hip-hop call-and-response.

Verse 2 (Dave East)

East’s “tokens” and “ten-speed” imagery anchors 1990s Manhattan — rhythmic enjambment mimicking subway stops.

Verse 3 (Lin-Manuel Miranda)

Miranda’s flow quick-cuts references (“Maurice Sendak,” “Where the Wild Things Are”) in iambic bursts, reflecting theatrical cadence.

Annotations

Wrote My Way Out Lyrics pulses like a cipher circle around a single mantra: pick up the pen and escape. Built on piano fragments from Hamilton’s “Hurricane,” the track folds three generations of storytellers—Nas, Dave East, and Lin-Manuel Miranda—into one testimony of hunger, hustle, and hope. What follows reshapes the original annotations into a flowing essay, preserving the facts while letting the prose glide, jab, and testify.

Overview

("I wrote my way out")

The chorus, sung by Aloe Blacc over Hamilton’s sampled line, links island orphan and inner-city poet. Miranda has long argued that Alexander Hamilton and rap icons share the same origin story: adversity, no safety net, only a mind on fire and a blank page for fuel. Each verse illustrates that thesis. Nas compares his rise from Queensbridge to Hamilton’s flight from St. Croix; Dave East breaks free of apartment 6E in Ravenswood; Miranda recalls playground beat-downs that drove him deeper into notebooks. Different eras, same weapon: the written word.

Nas: Street Scripture

I picked up the pen like Hamilton / No political power—just lyrical power.

Nas opens as “street analyst,” writing sermons about Reagan-era neglect—flickering hallway lights, mice in the projects, jailhouse lawyers parsing prejudiced court files. He invokes ‘87 Reaganism and the War on Drugs, noting how crack sentencing dwarfed powder-coke penalties and funneled Black men into the prison pipeline. In that context, the pen becomes both sword and key. By “architect-ing” life like the Waze app, he redraws the map: master bedroom now dwarfs the cramped apartment of his childhood. Declaring himself a “black Elohim from the streets of Queens,” Nas ties the song to his own 1996 classic It Was Written, proving the prophetic title true.

Dave East: Ten-Speed to Ten-Bars

I really wrote my way up out of 6E.

East’s verse sprints through pre-MetroCard New York: Diadora sneakers Mama couldn’t buy, ten-speed bike instead of subway tokens, court dates in the Catskills. He flips Spartan folklore—“three hundred rhymes” in place of spears—and warns that divine destiny is useless unless you seize the moment: “Opportunity knockin’, might miss it, that window closin’.” Champagne comes later (“Clicquot parties”) but begins with Bumble Bee tuna dinners, a stark upgrade narrative from canned fish to steak.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: Paper Bullets

High speed, dubbin’ these rhymes in my dual cassette deck.

Miranda’s verse crackles with cassette hiss, Rent checks, and Maurice Sendak monsters. He frames writing as addiction—ink withdrawal has him pleading “please give me that pen back.” Childhood bullies broke skin for being bookish (“Oh, you think you smart?”—blaow!), yet sister Luz redirected his revenge from fists to syllables. The stanza echoes Hamilton rhetoric: endless sentences, no chill, relentless output. He wields the pen like a scalpel—“draw blood … hit an artery”—for communities north of the GWB, aiming to be a beacon for Washington Heights and Inwood the way Abuela’s lottery ticket once promised relief in In the Heights.

Thematic Elements

• Pen as Passport. Each artist confirms Hamilton’s maxim: literacy equals leverage. From courtroom motions to Pulitzer libretti, the pen rewrites circumstance.
• Systems and Storms. Reaganomics, the War on Drugs, school-yard machismo—all swirl like hurricanes. The writers stand in the eye, calm only when the ink flows.
• Legacy and Lineage. Nas references Illmatic and It Was Written; East nods to Queensbridge forebears; Miranda threads Hamilton and Jonathan Larson. History is sampled, remixed, and re-rhymed.
• Visibility. From “Poetry in Motion” subway posters to the George Washington Bridge skyline, the verses insist on shining light where mainstream culture stays gray.

Musical Techniques & Samples

—picked up the pen like Hamilton

The track is stitched with vocal shards: Nas’ bar loops beside Miranda’s Broadway take, Dave East’s alternate cut murmurs under the outro. Illmind’s production preserves the rolling piano figure from “Hurricane,” but slows it into a contemplative head-nod. The hook’s stacked harmonies recall gospel call-and-response, reinforcing the song’s sermon feel.

Cultural Context

Tokens-to-MetroCard lore situates the listener firmly in New York’s evolving transit—and social—economy. References to Veuve Clicquot parties, Bumble Bee recalls, Reagan’s sentencing disparities, and Poetry in Motion ads ground each boast in documentary detail. Even Jonathan Larson’s ticking Rent clock parallels Hamilton’s manic output, underscoring the dread of vanishing time that haunts every ambitious writer.

The closing interview clips let Nas explain his mission in his own timbre: to fill a “hole in the rap game,” to “represent for my neighborhood.” It’s the same impulse that sent a 17-year-old Hamilton writing hurricane letters and a 30-something Miranda pitching hip-hop Founders at the White House. In the end, the message is plain: when the world turns its back, face the page—write your way out.

Song Credits

• Featured: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dave East, Aloe Blacc
• Producer: !llmind
• Composers: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Nas, Dave East, Aloe Blacc, !llmind
• Release Date: November 17 2016 (digital single)
• Genre: Hip Hop / East-Coast Rap / R&B
• Instruments: Sampled piano, programmed drums, sub-bass, ambient strings
• Label: Atlantic Records
• Mood: Resilient, reflective
• Length: 4 min 21 sec
• Track #: 3 on The Hamilton Mixtape
• Language: English
• Music style: Story-driven hip-hop with theatrical sampling
• Poetic meter: Predominantly loose iambic tetrameter
• Copyrights ©: Atlantic Records & Hamilton Uptown LLC

Songs Exploring Themes of Perseverance and Self-Expression

While Nas and company write through the storm, other tracks have walked similar tightropes.

Eminem — “Lose Yourself” (2002): Another pen-as-passport anthem. The 8-Mile narrative tightens like a drum head; guitar riffs pulse at 171 BPM, mirroring adrenaline. Both songs treat the blank page as battlefield, but Eminem’s lens is cinematic; Nas’s is documentary.

The Notorious B.I.G. — “Juicy” (1994): Biggie’s triumphal toast flips sampling of Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit” into diary entries. Where Nas references housing-project corridors, Biggie ticks off Source magazines and Super Nintendo — same rags-to-ink trajectory with a warmer afterglow.

Lin-Manuel Miranda — “My Shot” (2015): The Broadway original to which “Wrote My Way Out” owes thematic debt. Both hinge on seizing opportunity, but “My Shot” spreads its rebellion across ensemble harmonies; the Mixtape track localises revolt inside four writers’ notebooks.

Questions and Answers

Why sample “Hurricane” instead of writing an entirely new hook?

The sample anchors the song in Hamilton’s mythology, letting modern MCs converse with history rather than overwrite it.

Did the single chart?

It peaked at No. 87 on the U.S. iTunes songs chart shortly after release.

Is there an official remix?

Yes — a 2018 #HamilDrop version adds Royce da 5'9”, Joyner Lucas, and Black Thought.

Where else has the track appeared?

It features on the NBA 2K18 soundtrack, cementing its cultural reach beyond Broadway.

How many streams does it hold today?

On Spotify alone, plays exceed 22 million.

Awards and Chart Positions

The Hamilton Mixtape debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 187 000 units and has since been certified double-platinum by the RIAA.

Though the single never cracked the Hot 100, its inclusion in NBA 2K18 and steady digital sales cemented its pop-culture footprint.

How to Sing?

Most of the song is rapped, but the hook demands a silky, mid-tenor croon. Aloe Blacc floats between A₃ and E₅. Aim for relaxed diaphragm support; let the vowel on “out” widen slightly to avoid pinching. Tempo sits at roughly 92 BPM — keep a laid-back pocket. Breathing cue: inhale on the four-beat rest before “When the world turned its back on me.”

Fan and Media Reactions

“The line ‘I picked up the pen like Hamilton’ hit me like a freight train — pure motivation.”YouTube commenter @Wordsmith23

“Proof that Broadway and hip-hop can share the same heartbeat.”Pitchfork reader letter, January 2018

“It turns a historical mantra into a modern survival guide.”Vox, Constance Grady

“Heard it first on 2K18 — been writing verses ever since.”Reddit user @PickAndRollPoet

“Miranda’s verse made my mom cry.”Entertainment Weekly interview via Genius