Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I feel like, anytime I'm onstage, I tend to feel very connected with people in the audience or with the sort of heartbeat or tempo of the audience.
I've been sort of gentrification-obsessed. Right before I left Oakland in 2012, I was feeling it. Now I go back sporadically, and the change is drastic.
Writing is writing. It is all about telling stories, and I've been doing that for so long, in all realms, that it all feels like the same thing to me anyway.
Writing rap songs is about flow, about one word blending seamlessly into the next and creating a thing that is possible to perform in a way that feels natural.
I get excited to create things that don't exist in the same world as 'Hamilton' because that world is really well done and doesn't need me to inform it anymore.
I have this thing. I can rap really fast. I can rap really, really fast. It's a thing I'm good at and I've trained myself to do; it's a thing I do in the Bay Area.
The tricky thing about fast raps is not really the delivery of them; it's the writing of them, with consonants close enough together that you don't trip up over them.
There's no reason for somebody who's good at writing rap to be good at freestyling. They're different parts of your brain. You can develop both skills. I'm a much better writer.
Some people get a Broadway show, and that's their end game, and they want to sit there for as long as possible. And some people have other things they want to do with their life.
There's a lot of spaces that care about what kids are buying. There are a lot of spaces that care about what kids are watching. But there aren't a lot of spaces that care about what kids are saying.
My mom is a white Jewish lady, and my dad is black. The cultures never seemed separate - I had a lot of mixed friends. When I was young, I identified with being Jewish, but I embraced my dad's side, too.
The fact that I got to do the 'Hamilton' BET Cypher is a totally crazy thing because I've watched the BET Cyphers since it started. I've seen every one. I study them. Because I'm a rapper. It's what you do.
To walk into a casting room full of people who look like you is a crazy thing. What is the thing that necessitates all of us having the exact same shade of skin and having the same hair? What about this deodorant commercial needs that?
Clipping is a very specific, concept-y thing. We have all these rules: we don't sample drums. We create all our own sounds. I don't speak in the first person. We come from a background of experimental music like John Cage... Philip Glass.
All the way on the West Coast, never having seen a Broadway show, it was like, 'They don't want me. There's nothing there for me.' I'd come to New York a lot and never even tried to see a Broadway show. There was no reason for me to do that.
I liked being on stage because it gave me a reason to be around people. The other great thing about acting is it allows you to imagine circumstances different from your own. I was a poor Bay Area kid getting to pretend to be a Russian aristocrat.
It wasn't until I got out in the world and started worked professionally when I realized that the people I admired were the ones who had taken the little snippets of what they learned that worked for them - and strung them together in their own technique.
The reason you write something that is exciting and visceral is to force people to hear what you have to say, especially if you're in any kind of marginalized community where people don't want to listen. You have to come up with tricks to make them listen.
What writing a poem really does - and what figuring how to perform effectively really does - is forces people to listen to you. It frames your thoughts in such a way that grabs people's attentions and forces them to hear the things that you're actually saying.
I sort of have this feeling about change in general. We can make baby steps on a macro level. We can try to shift policy, voting and changing who's in office. But we can make huge, sweeping changes on a personal level and in your immediate circle, or just the people around you.
It's funny because as a rapper, there is - and this is something that Clipping challenges all the time - there is this idea about authenticity as a rapper, in the fact that you rap things that are yours. That's not what doing a play is. You're interpreting somebody else's words.
Oftentimes, it feels like we spend so much of our life waiting to make art, waiting for somebody to let us do something. You don't really have to do that. You can make it all the time. And 99 percent of the time, it's not going to be a big deal on a global scale. But 100 percent of the time, it's going to make you feel amazing.