-"Freestyle Love Supreme." -'Preme, 'preme, 'preme, 'preme.
-This is very, very --
Everything -- Everything I finish is going to have an echo?
-Well, just 'preme. -Okay, just like --
"Freestyle Love Supreme."
-'Preme, 'preme.
-Um -- [ Laughter ]
Before "In the Heights," before "Hamilton,"
there was "Freestyle Love Supreme."
-'Preme, 'preme, 'preme. -That's where it started, yeah.
Tell us about -- What do we -- What do people have to see
when they -- when they go see this show?
-Well, the thing about the show
is that it's totally different every night.
It's based on your suggestions. You make the show.
You give us a verb, and then 80 minutes later,
you have an entire hip-hop musical show.
And we started doing this in the basement of the Drama Book Shop
in like 2003,
Anthony Veneziale, who you'll see later tonight --
We were working on "In the Heights."
It was my first musical.
We were working in the basement of the Drama Book Shop.
We had no money. I was a substitute teacher.
-Wow. -And we were working
on "Heights" and Anthony, who worked at the book shop,
would come in and distract us.
He would be like, "Let's rap about our day."
-Veneziale. -Veneziale.
-That's a great name. Anthony Veneziale.
-And Chris Jackson and I were there in the basement,
and he was playing Benny, and I was playing Usnavi,
and we would just, like, freestyle.
And Anthony was like, "We should do this in front people!"
And here we are 15 years later on Broadway!
[ Cheers and applause ]
-That's the story!
That's how you do it, right? Come on.
-Yeah.
It's my longest running relationship.
-That's bizarre, right? Did you ever think, like, ever,
like, "Hey, we're going to do this on Broadway"?
This was just for -- It was for fun.
-It was for fun. It was like us for fun.
And we've just continued to sort of
find people who were good at this,
and now there's like 20 members of "Freestyle Love Supreme."
You'll see some of them tonight.
-You did one during the blackout, right, in New York?
-That was the first show.
It was the night of the blackout of 2003.
Some of you were not born.
I am old.
And it was --
It was scheduled for the night --
Basically, like, the power went out. It was at the PIT theater.
You know the PIT theater? -Yeah, the PIT, sure.
-Back when it was on 29th Street.
We were rehearsing for the show the next day,
and the power went our, and we were like, "Ugh, PIT theater."
-Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-And then we went out and realized the entire Northeast --
-The whole city was out, yeah. -The city and the state
and most of the Northeast coast was out.
And the power was coming back sort of block by block
after that blackout. -I remember that.
I was kind of -- I had fun with that blackout.
-Yeah, and we went to the --
-I know it's weird to say, but I did.
-Yeah, well, soon as we realized it was okay --
-It's okay, and everyone's fine. We took care of each other.
A very "take care of each other" moment.
-It was another sort of New York uniting --
-It was pitch black crossing the street, like, holding hands.
Like, "Sorry. Excuse me. Sorry. Pardon me."
-Yeah, so we showed up at our show,
and there were 16 people there,
but there was still no power at the PIT.
And that was on 29th.
We -- There were 16 people in the audience.
We had two cases of beer.
We walked our audience with us
11 blocks to the Drama Book Shop basement,
which did have power. We gave everyone a beer.
We rapped about everyone in the audience,
and that was the first "Freestyle Love Supreme" show.
"You get --" We were like broke Oprahs.
[ Laughter ]
-"You get a beer! You get a beer! You get a beer!"
-"You get a beer."
-And that was the first "Freestyle" show.
-Back in 2004, I want to take you back to that year.
-Okay.
-You posted this on your Twitter,
which I love, by the way. I follow you on Twitter,
and it's really fun -- -I follow you, too.
-I love the -- -Those hashtags!
[ Laughter ]
-I do love seeing all these things,
but, dude, I mean, the camping thing
we got to talk about some other time.
Your letters from camp?
-I didn't like it. -Oh, my gosh.
It's the most funniest --
Dude, but you were funny as a kid as you are now.
It's the best.
But this really flipped me out here.
This is 2004. This is your planner.
You're playing a bar mitzvah for --
-Yeah, I took a picture of my --
I found my daily planner from 2004.
It says, "12:30, 207 Street and 10th Avenue.
Boston Bar Mitzvah.
$400!" -Yeah.
-Which was like 2/3 of my rent at that point.
-Yeah. -And then it was taking me
to downtown Boston to dance at a bar mitzvah
at the Boston Harbor Hotel.
-I mean, this is -- This is 15 years ago.
-So this is a job
that took the last of my dignity.
[ Laughter ]
-How? -I would get hired --
You wear a black satin shirt. You wear black pants,
and your job is to, like, encourage the kids to dance.
So you're basically flirting with teenagers and old ladies,
being like, "Hey, Rachel.
Shanah Tovah! Happy New Year! Let's dance!"
[ Laughter ] And it's --
And it's -- It was very traumatic.
-Why was this one traumatic? You said to me, like --
-Well, this one I remember 'cause it had a Carnaval theme.
And in the Carnaval theme, we had to put on masks
and start a conga line.
And nothing robs you of your humanness
like putting on a mask.
So suddenly I've got this, like, Carnaval mask on,
and I'm conga'ing.
And, like, little old ladies are pinching my butt.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, see?
-Yeah, and I was just like... -And you go, "That's it."
-..."This is my last time doing this, for $400!"
-That's it, yeah. "It's $400!"
-It was $400!