Miranda as Alexander Hamilton. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images Miranda began working on "Hamilton" in 2009. He was inspired to write a hip-hop musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton after reading the 2004 biography "Alexander Hamilton" by historian Ron Chernow. He "saw Hamilton's relentlessness, brilliance, linguistic dexterity, and self-destructive stubbornness through his own idiosyncratic lens," wrote The New Yorker in 2015. "It was, he thought, a hip-hop story, an immigrant's story." Miranda has said that Hamilton reminded him of rapper Tupac Shakur, which is how he came up with the idea for a diverse hip-hop musical about Hamilton's life. Miranda worked on "Hamilton"— a project people, including his mentor and famed lyricist Stephen Sondheim, told him would never work — for years. He has said that he worked on the songs "Alexander Hamilton" and "My Shot" for an entire year each. But Miranda never let anyone's opinion discourage him, and it ultimately made its debut at the Public Theater in 2015. Months later, it went to Broadway.