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.
I warm up a lot harder for a Clipping show than I ever did for 'Hamilton.'
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 felt so loved and taken care of, and that's a huge part of the reason I'm able to do what I do.
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.
I think people understand I'm not actually the real Thomas Jefferson.
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.
Neither of my parents live in Oakland anymore. They both got priced out.
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.
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.
I have a recognizable silhouette.
As a kid, you don't have a ton of spaces where you are honored, where what you think is honored and what you say is revered.
I love that 'Black-ish' is a pretty traditional sitcom, structurally. It functions like the sitcoms from the '80s and '90s that I grew up with.
I didn't know a single musical soundtrack, really, growing up. Nobody listened to musicals. That wasn't a thing I did.
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 have all of Kendrick Lamar on vinyl.
Recording vocals has the same kind of physical demands as you experience a lot in theater work.
