Hip Hop is about 10 years older than I am. It sort of started in the '70s and I was born in the '80s, so I was never alive when Hip Hop wasn’t a part of the landscape. I’ve just been surrounded by it, and I sort of took a shot at it, and it’s been really well-received. What’s funny is when you see Hip Hop heads come to a show and they’ve got their arms crossed, and they’re like "Okay, what kind of bullshit Broadway version of Hip Hop are we gonna get?" And then they go, "Oh, wait, there’s a Big Pun reference in the show!" or ‘There’s a KRS-One [click to read] reference in the show!’ I come at it with a real love for it, and I think that it comes through.

DX: Moving on to the show itself, what made you think that a show with so much Hip Hop and Latino influence could find a home on Broadway, to say nothing of the critical and commercial response it has garnered?
LM: To be honest, I can’t believe that I’m really the first one here. There’s a big Hip Hop theater movement, and a lot of people have tried to do it. I’m just the first one to make it across the finish line, to be honest. It’s a natural fit for musical theater. At the end of the day, musical theater is about storytelling, and my favorite Hip Hop songs are the ones that tell stories. Whether it’s “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” or “Meet the Parents” [click to read] on Blueprint 2 [click to read], those are always the ones I’ve been most attracted to. I just want to write the kind of show I’d want to see – and you can’t worry about the rest of it.

DX: Because In the Heights has brought both Hip Hop and Latino culture to the forefront in Broadway, wouldn’t it be fair to say you’re “The Big Pun of Broadway?”
LM: No one will ever be Big Pun again, sadly. He remains unequaled. But I think a better analogy might be Run-DMC and Aerosmith's “Walk This Way,” in that a lot of people who had not been exposed to Hip Hop are seeing it in a different medium and context.

DX: Before your show, how much of a market was there for shows with Latino and Hip Hop influences?
LM: None. In fact, there was a sort of "Capeman Curse" named for Paul Simon's failed 1998 show. I can't tell you how many people predicted this show would die a quick, painful death. The conventional wisdom was, "Latinos don't go to Broadway."

DX: When you set out to do this show, were there stereotypes or barriers you hoped to overcome, or trends you had hoped to set by doing In the Heights?
LM: Prior to Heights, there have been two major musicals featuring Latinos: West Side Story, which is a masterpiece featuring Puerto Ricans as knife wielding murderers, and Paul Simon's The Capeman, which is about some real-life Puerto Ricans as knife wielding murderers. I just wanted to see if I could drop "knife-wielding murderers" from the equation.

DX: Do you feel that any of those goals come to fruition at this point?
LM: Absolutely. The fact that audiences have embraced the show indicates that they're hungry for something new, and that portraying Latinos positively and accurately aren't mutually exclusive.

DX: You did another interesting thing at the Tony Awards: your acceptance speech, which you decided to freestyle. The audience, many of whom who had probably never hear someone go off the dome before, seemed to genuinely enjoy it. Do you think that your speech endeared some people to the culture, or at least got them curious?
LM: Well, let me be perfectly honest: about half of that speech, I'd practiced in the shower. But about midway through, after I say "Chris Jackson," you can see the panic flood my face. The second half is freestyled. I think rhyming the speech was the only way to go, and frankly, I'm a lot more concise when I think in couplets.

DX: Did anyone there comment on the freestyle? I mean, it’s rare that anyone goes off the top these days, let alone at the Tonys.
LM: It was received pretty positively. I think anything unexpected that happens during a three-hour awards show is good. Those things are long.

DX: Hip Hop artists have, over the past few years, really taken to using the Internet as a method of self-promotion. You’ve done some viral promotion yourself, rapping in a few videos. When you made those, did you have in mind how receptive the Hip Hop community has been to that sort of advertising?
LM: Those videos serve two functions for me: They're a fun outlet that ISN'T In the Heights, and they're free advertising for the show. If people watch it and are curious about the show, all the better.

DX: Did you have concerns that taking that approach may have turned less open-minded audiences off from seeing the show?
LM: I had the same philosophy to making the videos as I did to writing the show: Do what I like, and what I think is good, and hopefully other people will too. The kind of people who close-mindedly disregard Hip Hop as an art form aren't checking for my Youtube videos anyway. Continued on page 4 »