Being an emcee onstage is mostly about crowd control, about monitoring energy levels.
As more doors open for me, I try to always bring people who I know through.
Acting is about finding truth and finding the way to convey the truth.
I have a recognizable silhouette.
I felt so loved and taken care of, and that's a huge part of the reason I'm able to do what I do.
At some point, I'll do more McDonald's commercials if I have to.
The fact that rap has a strict meter and stays to a click means that you have to make your thoughts concise.
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.
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 can jump really high, yeah. I'm proud of that. I'll take it.
If a project feels good to you, say yes. And do it with everything that you have and hope that the outcome is good.
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.
If you do enough rap shows, you get a pretty good sense of an audience. You start to develop this sense of what a feeling of a room or a group is.
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.
I was really aware, even while it was happening, that the discovery of arts education in my life sort of saved my life.
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.
I think this idea of a big break is a lie.
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.
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 went to Hebrew school but opted out of a bar mitzvah.
