‘Warriors’ Concept Album Makes Chart-Topping Debut

Warriors, the star-studded concept album inspired by the 1979 cult film The Warriors, makes a splash on Billboard’s charts. The set, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis, debuts at No. 1 on the Compilation Albums chart, and in the top 25 on both the Top Album Sales and Top Current Album Sales rankings (all dated Nov. 2).

The new 24-song project was released on Oct. 18 and boasts such artists as Cam’ron, Ghostface Killah, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Marc Anthony, Nas, Billy Porter, Busta Rhymes, RZA and Shenseea. In addition, two cast members from the 1979 film also appear on the album: James Remar and David Patrick Kelly. Warriors was available to purchase in its first week as a digital download, CD and vinyl LP.

The album is produced by Mike Elizondo and executive-produced by Nas.

In The Warriors film, a Coney Island street gang (The Warriors) must travel across New York to get back home while numerous other gangs try to murder them as revenge for an assassination they’re falsely accused of. The Warriors album flips the gender of the title gang to female, an idea motivated “in response to seeing GamerGate happen online around 2015,” Miranda recently told Billboard. “Every plot point is wrinkled or changed in some fundamental way. I got excited by the notion of writing women’s voices surviving the night.”

Among the voices on the album is Hill, who performs the song “If You Can Count.” The singer-songwriter has not released a studio album since 1998 and rarely releases new studio material. Miranda says Hill’s track was “the first song we wrote.”

“We had no plan B. We wrote it to Lauryn Hill’s voice … the fact that she trusted us and sang the song we wrote will always be among the greatest honors of our careers, but then added so much of herself to it, added background vocals. She’s a co-producer on that track and she earned every bit of it.”