The low-budget rap show that accidentally created Hamilton

this video is brought to you by ag1 everything you're about to hear is true this is lin-manuel Miranda right next to him is Barack Obama standing in the White House Rose Garden Miranda prepared to do something never before attempted in history he was gonna perform a freestyle rap with the president of the United States of America mere months before Miranda's Cannonball of a new musical Hamilton truly exploded into a cultural phenomenon this moment in March of 2016 symbolized the Calm before the

hurricane not just for the show but for its creator this was one month before he won the Pulitzer Prize three months before the show won 11 Tony Awards and nine months before the Hamilton mixtape dropped with some of the hottest names in rap and hip-hop standing on the edge of super stardom lin-manuel Miranda unknowingly took one minute and 43 seconds to embrace the life he was leaving I'm a hollow rocket I make a hell of Racket I don't know what to say I take it and pack it up like lunch and th

en a bunch in a month and a bunch like a [ __ ] Captain Crunch before rapping on a Revolutionary War battlefield lin-manuel Miranda wrapped in low-lit New York City bars with freestyle Love Supreme an improv rap act where the worlds of Tupac and Whose Line Is It Anyway collided standing across from the president in 2016 the White House Rose Garden ceased to exist as Miranda went right back to a dimly lit rehearsal room in 2004. a time before Hamilton and in the Heights when freestyle and love Re

igns Supreme I'm working 16 hours a day I try to eat right never do great still now I don't want to crash more natural energies what I'm looking at when I get vitamin B I get sustainable energy so now I've got a drink without crushing from coffee I went on the internet and found the website ag1 I got a big box to better my nutrition I take it every morning on time helping out my gut with some enzymes vitamins from he1 leave me feeling happy and healthy get a whole year for free of vitamins from

ag1 get a whole year for free of vitamins from ag1 enter my link in the description below to get a free one-year supply of AG vitamin D3 and K2 plus five ag1 travel packs with your first purchase of ag-1 so [Music] rap didn't start in a studio it didn't start in some executive office space for some powerful record label rap started on the New York city streets the South Bronx is trying to Rise From the Ashes it is a battle to do so and the people who live around here say they're tired of what th

ey call all the broken promises in the early 1970s predominantly black and Latin boroughs like the South Bronx became the symbol of Urban Decay the area was one of many to be neglected funding by policy makers leading to the rapid collapse of its infrastructure a decrease in jobs and an increase in crime the borough literally burnt to the ground with nobody to turn to for help people needed an outlet to express their frustrations this speak up against these injustices against the negativity and

against the violence taking over their communities hip-hop and rap gave that power first glance it might be easy to assume rap and hip-hop are the same thing but they're not rap is a type of music hip-hop is the culture an artistic movement of turntableism DJing graffiti rap and breaking also known as b-boying g-girling or breakdancing challenge the idea of what Society deemed as a worthy art the purest example of this still lives today with the cipher come on hip hop came from the struggle and

you know what happens with humans every human comes from a struggle yo my name is m-i-k-y Mickey for me and I'm part of legendary cyphers when we in a circle is an exchange of information anywhere that you're right with a group that's the same all together you know it's like Eminem or Detroit and make them walk like eight months if you got the knowledge you got the wisdom teeth but I got the understanding hold on rules of freestyling I don't think there's any rules of freestyling I think that I

think that's the main rule of freestyling that there are no rules Eli black represent legendary cyphers paying attention I think is the main thing to do in The Cypher you have to you can't just be focused on rapping because then you get distracted but you may not you may not even see what's going on you may just be we may be the energy that's just throwing everything off because you weren't paying attention to what's happening the energy of the cipher is both undefinable and irresistible Battle

of words and expression an outlet to release emotional turmoil a place where everyone jockeys for their shot at the mic to speak their truth it's Community it's ego it's survival compared to the slick and grimy sidewalks of Union Square Park the carefully manicured Paths of Wesleyan University in Connecticut might as well been a completely different planet as former High School sports star Thomas kale entered his junior year at Wesleyan he found that life didn't have charts to explain the next p

lay growing up he could outmaneuver any goalie and hit any pitch that came his way in real life not so much the same went for his friend Anthony veneziale a Wesleyan senior who got cut from the college soccer team two years prior only to audition for an improv company called gag reflex three days later veneziali eventually dragged kale into the theatrical Arena as the assistant director for a School production of Hamlet machine a highly experimental loose retelling of Hamlet veneziali and kale c

ame from very different upbringings but clicked over a shared love of hip-hop given hip-hop's importance as a cultural art form and expression of Oppression specific to bipod communities it's surprising that 70 percent of rap consumers are white Suburban males this trend isn't new it happened with jazz in the 20s and rock and roll in the 50s researcher Janice M Blackshear attributed this trend to White listeners subconsciously using black and Latin struggles to negotiate the boundaries of their

true Suburban identities but veneziale viewed the fusion of rap and theater as a way to explore the conversation of race and Hamlet machine was the vessel I cast the show with two black ophelias and two white hamlets and it was about an interracial relationship and so we were just trying to explore what it meant to be here at this college trying to ask questions of each other why didn't we know each other better veneziali gathered the cast and crew on stage before the start of each performance f

or their very own Cipher session it was just this lovely opportunity to say I'm not good at this thing I'm going to try it anyway and we're gonna use a black art form as which hip-hop is and and rap is um to start this conversation that would later happen for the rest of the show veneziali's love for freestyle was hardly a secret up near Philadelphia in the 80s and 90s when the city's hip-hop scene flourished thanks to acts like the Fresh Prince Will Smith and The Roots any house party veniziali

attended in college inevitably turned into a freestyle rap session and sometimes he even brought a piece of cardboard to do some breaking after graduating kale and veniziali both found their way to New York City and eventually started a theater troupe called back House Productions to help pay the bills kale got a job as a personal assistant to Tony award-winning actress Audra McDonald veneziale who moved to the city with just 200 in a mattress got a catering job and started auditioning for acti

ng gigs in 1999 the two friends embarked on a grueling 18-hour road trip made even worse by severe hail pelting their car to take their mind off the drive veneziali turned on Daft Punk's song around the world and freestyled over the beat for four hours straight while kale bobbed along caught up in the magic of the moment the hail and Cyclones disappeared replaced with memories of college Cipher sessions and late night freestyle parties soon after returning to the city veneziali and keol got thei

r first break into the world of Show Business the owner of the 100 year old drama Bookshop Alan Hubby was looking for a theater troop to Stage shows in the Shop's new basement theater and offered the spot to their back House Productions just like that they had a space now they needed a show in November of 2001 an equally unsure Wesleyan senior named lin-manuel Miranda watched a musical in a darkened theater and contemplated his future the show was Tick Tick boom an autobiographical musical about

rent Creator Jonathan Larson's less than ideal early years writing in New York City Miranda a young composer raised on Andrew Lloyd Webber and Fat Boys recognized that both musicals and wrath emphasize storytelling and looked to bring the worlds together in a show called in the Heights but walking out of tick Tick boom on that brisk November night lin-manuel Miranda realized getting in the Heights to Broadway was going to be a lot harder than he thought when Miranda joined the theater program a

t Wesleyan University in 1998 his path briefly ran close to that of Thomas kale and Anthony veneziale veneziali T8 one of Miranda's classes and keol only knew of him as the kid who kept stealing his stage lights yet Miranda kept popping up Kale's friends kept mentioning some musical The Annoying freshman was working on and sent kale a couple demo tracks of in the Heights the rap and hip-hop influences were unlike anything kale ever heard in a stage setting it sounded less like a musical and more

like something he would listen to if he were just buying a CD kale kept tabs on Miranda until he graduated in 2002 immediately inviting the young composer to the drama Bookshop basement the two spent hours discussing what in the Heights was and what it could be when all was said and done Miranda agreed to partner up with Thomas kale and back House Productions to bring in the Heights to life yeah when rehearsals for the rap heavy musical started the drama book Shop's newest employee Anthony veni

ziali sensed an opportunity to pursue an idea he'd been thinking about ever since that 18-hour car ride a freestyle rap improv show during every other in the Heights rehearsal break veneziali popped in to freestyle rap around the piano with Miranda only stopping once kale stepped in to get the rehearsals back on track veneziali's parting words were always we should do this in front of people Kayla Miranda thought he was joking but after veneziali said this consistently for a year they realized h

e was serious the first rule of improv theater always say yes the second rule be quick on your feet in August of 2003 veneziali finally convinced Miranda to perform their freestyle rap show at the people's improv theater or the pit the night before their first show New York City experienced one of the worst power outages in history when a tree branch hit a power line in Cleveland Ohio and plunged eight states across the East Coast Into Darkness though the lights in the city were slowly turning b

ack on everything from 34th Street down remained dark who showed up to the pit on 29th Street to find a crowd of 16 excited friends waiting to see the show and a performance space still without power but the lights were on at the drama Bookshop and veneziale had the keys viniciani and Miranda led the merry band of 16 friends up 11 blocks to the Bookshop basement Walking In The Crowd was an upstart producer named Jill Furman an actor called me and said you need to go see the show that's being Wor

kshop in the basement of the drama Bookshop at the Latino rich and I thought oh no everything is that something rent but um okay and that was the beginning of my relationship with lin-manuel at that moment I thought I I have to be in Hip life and I said to my dad fun to preview but I'm going out on my own and I need to produce this musical and so that that's how it all began also in the crowd was Bill Sherman when Manuel Miranda's former roommate and an orchestrator for in the Heights the only p

erson who didn't make it the DJ in need of Music they asked Sherman to provide the accompaniment for the night Sherman told the two that unfortunately he couldn't really play the piano but he could damn well play the saxophone the three made up an entire 45-minute show on the spot to a super delighted crowd Sherman even made the jump with veneziality and Miranda when the unnamed improv rap show eventually got up and running at the pit theater still wanting a piano Miranda recruited his Elementar

y School friend Arthur Lewis Lynn and I were working on some other music together and he had started doing this thing with Anthony and he came over one day and he was like you're coming to do this show You're Gonna Play keyboards and I was like I don't know I'm nervous about doing stuff and he's like no man you're doing it you're doing it okay at first glance the performers jumping around the stage each night at the improv theater were the furthest thing from a professional rap group veneziali w

orked in a Bookshop that sold plays and Miranda was a 7th grade English teacher a pretty Far Cry from Tupac and Biggie Chris Sullivan a performer with a love for the Beastie Boys eventually attended one of the group's pit performances and instantly knew he needed to be a part of it without knowing any of the performers Sullivan went right up to Anthony veneziale and said he wanted to join the group veneziali asked well what do you do in response Sullivan started beatboxing a stun veneziali and M

iranda immediately welcomed him into their growing group the ACT officially had two rappers a Pianist a saxophonist and a beatboxer now they just needed a name [Music] the similarities between jazz and rap are numerous the off the top competition between trumpets and saxophones mirrors that of the different voices in a rap Cipher they provide an outlet for pain political frustration and social commentary with free-flowing self-expression in December 1964 a quartet of musicians led by John Coltra

ne walked into a dimly lit recording studio in New Jersey Coltrane Rose to prominence after playing saxophone with jazz legend Miles Davis for four years a dream gig that ended on a sour note once coltrane's dependence on alcohol and heroin cost him his job but from this struggle spawned a masterpiece in one uninterrupted recording session Coltrane emerged from the studio with the album A Love Supreme after watching a couple of Venezia Ali and Miranda's performances Thomas kale started giving su

ggestions for the ACT the biggest being a name Kayla wanted to pay homage to the improvisational connection Coltrane experienced and suggested the name freestyle Love Supreme everyone hated it as veneziali recalled everybody was like that's a terrible name it's really long and who's gonna understand why you're paying homage to John Coltrane and what it means to put love in the center of this silly thing that we're doing but the name eventually grew on them and thus freestyle loves Supreme was bo

rn [Music] [Applause] the group of friends rapping around New York City weren't the only ones trying to find their voices in the early 2000s following the Unexpected death of her younger brother Jenny steingart was left trying to figure out how to continue his legacy he was only 26 years old and had just started building a recording studio for his classical music record label Pro Gloria music so I was really struggling on as you know as you can imagine struggling on a lot of different levels to

make sense of it all and also to kind of and deal with I guess really you could say my own survivor's guilt of what was it like that I was going to get to live out my dreams and all the things that I didn't even know what I fully what my life would look like and I was really struck with this feeling that I needed to continue his legacy in some way but I didn't really know what that was going to look like one night after sitting shiva and mourning for her brother steingart was approached by one o

f the catering waitresses who asked to see steingart in the kitchen after overhearing so many stories of steingard's brother the waitress had painted a whole series of work in his memory the penny drop for me in that moment that she didn't know Gabe and his life and ultimately his death had created art in a totally different form in a different medium and I realized then that I didn't need to continue his record label I didn't need to worry about how was I going to keep his classical music alive

what I just needed to do was lean into the idea that on the other side of the pain and lost was Beauty and art in 2002 Jenny steingart and her husband John officially opened the doors to ours Nova a non-profit supporting artist making music comedy and theater the space faced countless struggles in its early years thanks to a less than ideal location near the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a struggling theater scene stemming from the 911 terrorist attacks those beginning days no one knew anyth

ing about ours Nova so it really was dependent on what we were all out there finding I'm Jason Egan I'm the founding artistic director of ours Nova I think more importantly and what made its way into the fabric of ours Nova is I was really excited about finding P for potential and John steingart is actually the first person who saw freestyle of supreme and John came back and said oh my God uh yes please and he introduced them to Jason Egan our artistic director I remember coming up the second fl

oor staircase and the guys were all just getting off the elevator so we all sort of merged as we walked to John's office and I was instantly enamored by all of them they just had such incredible energy and knowing what they were capable of on stage was certainly feeding it but you could just feel something special the elevator pitch was it's Whose Line Is It Anyway meets the Wu-Tang Clan and the reason why I really wanted to do this show in the first place was I was a part of the Improv scene an

d The Improv scene looked a lot like me in the late 90s early 2000s is white dudes it's predominantly white dudes and so I wanted to create freestyle of supreme because I knew it was a language that was predominantly not white so if I created an improv show that was a language that was predominantly not white I might attract people who weren't white to do Improv ours Nova loved the Improv rap show concept and eventually offered the group access to their 99 seat theater freestyle and structure go

about as well together as an NWA record at a church sermon when it came time to shape the show into a satisfying evening of theater rather than 45 minutes of random rap kale needed to become more of a coach than a director tapping back to his Sports days kale came up with the play much like American football each performer in freestyle Love Supreme played a different position three MCS known as mic 1 mic 2 and Mike three led the field while two musicians and a beatboxer provided backup mic one

was the quarterback the one in charge of leading the audience through the night and Gathering ideas from the crowd to turn into raps at arsenova this was Anthony veneziality Mike 2 was the running back the strongest freestyle rapper on the team who could receive the handoff of audience ideas and run with them at arsenova this was lin-manuel Miranda Mike 3 was the wide receiver usually a singer and rapper who wasn't afraid to go high to blow away the audience with their belting 3 spot they ventur

ed into the in the Heights cast and recruited a reluctant Christopher Jackson a young actor with a gentle presence and a Powerhouse voice a night with freestyle loved Supreme started with something called the mic check during which three MCS took to the stage while identifying their mic and then handed off the evening to Mike one my check this is microphone one this is microphone [Applause] ladies and gentlemen we all freestyle love soup given that a majority of the audience attending usually wa

sn't familiar with rap the first game foundation's a freestyle introduced well the foundations of freestyle rap necessary to understanding the rest of the show inspiration from a popular form of freestyle where one person throws out words and another person incorporates them into a rap who the hell are you I am the one that's from The Roots crew and I'm telling you to Rebel Steve yes you know he's going to leave after he busts the straight arm pieces show I am the kid that got the speech that yo

u can't impeach because I am not a leech I won't only in this case the words came directly from a bucket filled with audience suggestions during their time at RS Nova freestyle loved Supreme leaned heavier into the Improv aspects of the ACT rotating through multiple games for the group to play in a single evening they'd perform everything from Angry raps about things people hated in pet peeves to singing an honest and sentimental song in the game true this first run also properly introduced rap

names for all the performers Anthony veneziale became too touch lin-manuel Miranda Lin man Christopher Jackson C Jack Chris Sullivan Shockwave Arthur Lewis Arthur the Geniuses and Bill Sherman King Sherman at arsnova each performance of freestyle Love Supreme thrived on experimentation unpredictability and above all else failure it was just fortuitous that Azar's Nova was figuring out what it was and we were figuring out how to do our jobs they were figuring out what this show was and finding th

eir own voices in their own Artistry and we just sort of all came up together during the ARs Nova run a producer came up to the group and told them this would be fantastic at The Fringe Festival the summer of 2005 lin-manuel Miranda started his ascent just as he got the news that two of Broadway's hottest producers Kevin McCallum and Jeffrey seller wanted to produce in the Heights with Jill Furman Miranda jetted off to Scotland with freestyle Love Supreme the Edinburgh Fringe Festival transforms

the city into a district of disorder filled with lassoing Cowboys and spontaneous Conga lines responsible for giving countless projects their big break fls viewed The Fringe as the next step in proving the ax formula worked outside of New York City even though roughly 2 million people attended the festival getting people to notice fls wasn't as simple as a few well-placed Flyers a negative review calling the show instantly disposable didn't help matters the review threatened to stop an already

reluctant crowd from showing up and left the act in danger of getting lost in the sea of other performers so the group did what any good freestyle rapper would they took to the streets no piece of sidewalk was safe as they spontaneously wrapped during the day to sparked interest for their show that night the guerrilla marketing only interrupted by occasional rounds of NFL Street slowly crowd started showing up to their space and positive word of mouth started to spread across the city the freest

yle loved Supreme formula worked foreign shielded veneziality kale and Miranda from what would eventually be the roller coaster of the next two years and the fact that their paths were about to diverge but none of that mattered in the summer of 2005. there was just Edinburgh [Music] later that year Anthony veneziali faced a big decision in the Heights inched closer and closer to a professional run lin-manuel Miranda turned down job offers and Thomas kale quit his to double down on making the mus

ical even though veneziali followed the in the Heights process he wasn't as involved as the other two you just watch from the sidelines while auditioning for other shows as veneziali put it in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner out of 600 auditions he'd hear 40 no's and 550 nothings the demoralizing aspects of the job started to stack up and then his partner got accepted into a PhD program in California wanting to support his family veneziali made the tough decision to move across the

country to San Francisco in the summer of 2006. but veneziali didn't want his move to spell the end of freestyle of supreme if anything the past year approved fls was far from stationary as they performed around the globe from Melbourne Australia to Aspen Colorado while fls was veneziali's main project the team connected to in the Heights viewed it a little bit differently the prospect of a Broadway run for in the Heights became an increasing possibility veneziali was left with a problem many of

the big players for freestyle of supreme were also big players for in the Heights Christopher Jackson was acting alongside composer and star lin-manuel Miranda Thomas kale was directing and Bill Sherman was orchestrating kale held auditions for fls in New York with veneziale to find suitable replacements for Miranda and Jackson still feeling a certain responsibility to the group and his friend one potential replacement was utkarsh on budkar as a South Asian actor who faced difficulty finding ro

les that matched his ethnicity ambutkar escaped the unforgiving world of acting through hip-hop each night melted into a blur of New York City clubs with ambutkar doing some drugs selling others and rapping against anyone courageous enough to face him by sophomore or Junior year of college I had put completely checked out like I was like all the shrooms all the acid and I feel guilty about it I'm like I probably shouldn't be doing this but it's who I am like this is hip-hop this is New York this

is like 22 man this is what we do smoke weed every day like this is the lifestyle so when I met the guys I was you see the movie eight miles yeah of course I was doing Eight Mile raps which is essentially can we curse on this podcast of course which is essentially dick swinging right it's an ego it's an expression of all of the fantasies of one's ego so it's like you know I'll bury you I'll carry you this is a you know this is mean brought this same energy into his freestyle Love Supreme auditi

on something that impressed clubs but not Thomas kale and Tommy said to me he was like that's great you have the skill set that's not what we do here he said it's infinitely more interesting if you can rap about the Incredible Hulk or a box of Wheat Thins or your parents with the same amount of dexterity as you rap about yourself joined the team alongside actor James Monroe iglehart leaving lin-manuel Miranda and Christopher Jackson to hand off their mics and step out of the cipher fls continued

performing throughout 2007. but with so many of the original members out of the mix and veniziali flying in from the other side of the country the frequency of performances slowed down meanwhile in the Heights prepared to light up the sky Broadway's been turned on its head only a couple of times March 8 2008 was one of those times six blocks from where it started in the drama Bookshop basement in the Heights officially debuted on Broadway around this time a new generation started to rise many o

f whom replaced the America First sentiment with a more Global acceptance as evidenced by the first female and black presidential candidates in history when Miranda walked on stage as the bodega shop owner usnavi and started rapping about his community the audience recognized that this desired change also extended to Broadway as historian Chris Jones put it in his book rise up in one night you could see how limited and exclusionary Broadway had been what stories it had told and who'd been chosen

to tell them in the Heights would start to change that reality the sounds of the community that surrounded Miranda growing up blasted through the Richard Rogers theater in a beautiful collage of salsa hip-hop and somehow traditional Broadway melodies the New York Times raved about the show and declared lin-manuel Miranda a singular New Sensation that June in the Heights won four Tony Awards including best musical and consistently pulled in over 1 million dollars a week in ticket sales in the bl

ink of an eye the musical flourished into a sensation taking its creator with it as lin-manuel Miranda's career soared to new heights Anthony veneziali encountered an exciting opportunity a producer named Karen Fowler planned to ask for a 19 million dollar Grant to reboot the 1970s show The Electric Company essentially a spin-off of Sesame Street that focused on teaching children about sounds and how to read and she wanted freestyle Love Supreme to help make a pitch Venezia Ali spearheaded the p

roject alongside Thomas kale to conceive a couple comedy sketches to show to the Department of Education it went well they got the grant we were able to do the series and I was supposed to be the lead I was supposed to be in every single episode as the main character and Karen said well you know we love you the energy of you you think you're like this perfect kind of camp counselor this is kind of how we think of that role um but you're white and this is exactly what in the Heights was as well i

t's it's a show that is specifically made for non-white people to be in and I love that I'm so proud of that that's why I got into theater this is the conversation that I have always been most interested in in being a part of the electric company reboot officially premiered on PBS on January 19th 2009. freestyle of supreme members appeared throughout the episodes in periodic two minute guest segments Chris Sullivan that is the combination of phonics and beatboxing went hand in hand and scored Su

llivan a recurring lead role for the next three seasons after filming just one season veneziali flew home to San Francisco seeing how the rest of the fls team was busy with new york-based projects like the electric company and lin-manuel Miranda's experimental rap concept album The Space Between freestyle Love Supreme performances grew longer and longer veneziali started to miss it to fill the void veneziali created a West Coast variation of the ACT called the freeze with a teaching colleague na

med David Diggs and an old Wesleyan friend named Andrew Bancroft hi I'm Andrew Bancroft AKA Jelly D or jelly donut I knew Anthony from Wesleyan and then we reconnected when he moved to San Francisco I was living there for a number of years I was Battle rapping in Oakland California doing a bunch of weird artist things that you do in San Francisco wearing a donut costume out of those kind of things that you do and we started a group called the freeze in San Francisco and the freeze was kind of a

sister to Freestyle that supreme but we had live drums uh live uh bass and guitar and percussionists and women rapping and singing with us [Music] freeze the freeze operated with its own distinct style and lineup of performers independent of freestyle Love Supreme for two years then in the summer of 2011 Andrew Bancroft got a phone call that started to change everything freestyle of supreme got a spot in Outside Lands which is a great Festival in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and I lived pre

tty close by uh you know doing that festival and I think it was Anthony he was like well let's have jelly join us because he's right down the road um so that was kind of my first time doing a number of shows with the group the wall of separation between the two groups vanished in 2013. when freestyle Love Supreme performed at Super Bowl 47. not only did this performance introduce David Diggs to Freestyle of supreme it also introduced Diggs to lin-manuel Miranda the successful two-year run of in

the Heights on Broadway didn't stop Miranda from riding like he was running out of time if anything it made him work harder Miranda unveiled the concept of a Alexander Hamilton mixtape at the White House poetry slam in 2009. the idea was simple get some of his favorite hip-hop Idols to sing the story of the politician's life after witnessing David Diggs and his Lightning Fast rapping ability Miranda invited him to take part in an early reading for his rap concept album The Hamilton mixtape Diggs

had never met Miranda before this but after hearing one enthusiastic pitch he was sold just like that David Diggs made the risky decision to pack up his entire life and move across the country to New York City later that year the Hamilton mixtape concept album continued to take shape in July 2013. after a couple Showcases of songs at places including Lincoln Center the story finally came to life with two staged readings at Vassar College in the year leading up to this ukarsh ambutkar had played

Hamilton's rival Aaron Burr the role of a lifetime hand-picked for him by Miranda but at Vassar College ambudkar threw away his shot I'm not a trained musical theater guy it's not like I can just show up and be dope I have to work but if you're drunk at nine in the morning or 10 in the morning that skill no man yeah and Chris Jackson sat me down and he was like you know this is their life this is how they're going to put their kids through college this means the world to them and you know it's

not some little [ __ ] it's Tommy kale and lin-manuel Miranda like we already don't been through in the Heights you saw what that was you're [ __ ] up and meanwhile I'm at the bar every night I went through that week with an inability to perform in the way that they wanted me to and knew that I could I was unable to meet the moment because of what was going on in my life after the reading ambut car flew back to California and Thomas kale and lin-manuel Miranda started considering replacements li

n-manuel Miranda missed freestyling in 2013 the public repeatedly pushed Miranda to develop Hamilton as an Off-Broadway musical but he wasn't ready for that you really wanted to make a concept album maybe he could do something else at the public lin-manuel Miranda and the original members of freestyle Love Supreme brought back their rap improv show for a couple performances at Joe's Pub a small Cabaret venue attached to the public during the Joe's pub run it was just like the six friends were ba

ck in the drama Bookshop basement making each other laugh around a piano the Calm before the hurricane Fresh Off The Joe's pub run and a deepened connection with the public theater lin-manuel Miranda finally agreed to develop Hamilton as a full-fledged musical across the country utkarsh ambukar read the news and excitedly called Thomas kale ready to reassume his spot as Aaron Burr kale told him that after his performance at Vassar they had to move on the blow hit like a ton of bricks and snapped

ambutar out of his dependency on alcohol he flew from California to New York to audition for Kayla Miranda one last time even though he knew he wasn't going to get the part he thought that maybe he could win back their respect and it was [ __ ] humbling as [ __ ] man and they walked out of the room and I was changing and I had nowhere to go I was like in New York for a day and newly sober I was just trying to get my [ __ ] together and I know that if that went a long way for them one year and o

ne mildly successful television series later freestyle loved Supreme once again returned to the sidelines as Hamilton prepared to open at the public in 2015. Anthony veneziali sat in the audience for one of the last preview performances and was left in amazement it kept up on the Project's entire gestation from album to Musical and loved almost everything he saw almost everything since they met at Wesleyan University in the 90s veneziali served as somewhat of a mentor figure for kale the senior

who pulled the junior into the world of theater with this seniority veneziali never shied away from offering creative advice and insight on Kale's directing projects Hamilton was no different after seeing the show veneziali sent in unsolicited email to kale offering his thoughts on the musical and suggested changes just a few days before opening night a lot had changed since their collaboration on Hamlet machine and Backhouse Productions Thomas kale was now a member of Voltron a name for the in

the Heights creative team that came from a TV show where a group of explorers pilot a giant robot when veneziali left to support his family in California Voltron grew stronger without it and I think in a lot of ways Tommy and Lynn when I moved they were a little bit like oh that hurt our feelings they missed you yeah Anthony and I have in some way you know the the furthest reach back and then the most Divergent path because when he left he was the person that I was with all the time and then I w

as with not at all I didn't have a regular interaction with him and then something had kind of just ceased to exist between us anymore the distance between veneziali and his friends started to extend beyond flights and coastlines Voltron kept racking up major victories but veneziali fell outside their orbit constantly spectating as in the Heights the electric company and eventually Hamilton rocketed the team to the Stars after a Broadway Smash and a Tony nomination Thomas kale didn't need mentor

s anymore he needed peers something he felt veniziali couldn't be with just one click of the send button the dynamic between the two changed forever Hamilton rocketed Voltron now renamed the cabinet to the top of the Broadway Mountain a path that eventually LED lin-manuel Miranda here to the White House Rose Garden freestyle wrapping in front of President Obama four years later Anthony veneziale Thomas kale and lin-manuel Miranda walked into a small black box theater in the West Village in Janua

ry 2019. everything had changed and nothing had changed veneziali the guy who loved rapping at House Parties was now a family man and the co-founder of speechless a company that led improv and rap-infused workshops from major corporations keol The Jock who never thought much about theater was now a Tony award-winning director revered for his bold artistic vision and collaborative Spirit Miranda the kid who used to read plays on the drama Bookshop floor because he couldn't afford to buy them was

now a three-time Tony Award winner a Pulitzer Prize winner a Grammy award winner a MacArthur genius Grant recipient and one of the biggest celebrities on the planet none of them could have predicted how different their paths would turn out to be and yet all roads LED back to Freestyle Love Supreme [Music] ours Nova had grown once a small theater with metaphorical tumbleweeds blowing through the office it was now one of New York's top incubators for new Innovative Works arsenova had just taken ov

er Greenwich house I think there was discussions of like okay well the first show could be freestyle to celebrate the new space freestyle loved Supreme embarked on its longest run yet playing the Greenwich house theater for a three-month residency [Music] because our show is totally made up from the moment freestyle loved Supreme returned to the stage that January to their final performance that March it was like nothing that happened before mattered it didn't matter who missed out on what part

who had what accolades who fell out with who and just like that the dream was over the needle scratched to a halt on the record player their time at Greenwich house ended and everyone snapped back to reality a reality where the electric company was canceled the drama book shop closed and the innocence of the early 2000s faded into a memory then in late 2019 Andrew Bancroft received another phone call I think I was in San Francisco at the time I remember and I got a call from Tommy kale and like

oh you answered you answered the phone when Tommy Cal calls and and he was like uh we're we're gonna do a uh Broadway run we're gonna do it later this year I was like I couldn't believe it people would have happened they had was became ABS Building and I think that that opened up doors for Broadway and we we just believe that people would would really react positively 15 years after it started with a group of friends freestyle loved Supreme opened to a packed Booth theater on Broadway on October

19th 2019. with the new venue came new opportunities it had been that group of guy friends for a long time I think we all were like it's time to get women on stage it's time to have you know different representation on stage and we're very fortunate to have Kayla Milady Anissa folds Ashley Perez Flanagan join us as the first women uh in the group and it it just changed the game you know it really uh blossomed 80 of Broadway shows don't recoup their investment making it a remarkable moment when

freestyle Love Supreme did it just five days before closing rap ciphers thrive on disruption constant unpredictable variables that Force the group to adapt in one way or another it's certain that the circle will look and feel completely different at the end of the night than the beginning it'll grow it'll shrink it'll get sentimental it'll get confrontational there's no way of knowing how a cipher will end just that it will end the way it's meant to some people will jump in some people will jump

out but if someone truly loves it they'll always jump back in same could be said or freestyle Love Supreme around the same time lin-manuel Miranda and Tommy Kale's stage freestyle of supreme at Ranch House theater in 2019 they were also in the middle of a huge battle to save their artistic home click on this video to learn about the history of the drama Bookshop and how Hamilton fought to save it foreign