ifshehadwings reblogged
My quick fandom is due to how deftly Diggs—a member of both the LA-based rap trio Clipping and the New York sketch comedy troupe Freestyle Love Supreme—plays a dual role as President Thomas Jefferson and the French-aristocrat-slash-American-military-officer Marquis de Lafayette in Hamilton, the off-Broadway smash that opens on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on August 8. The historical dramedy, which recounts the American Revolution as Alexander Hamilton—the country’s first secretary of the treasury—experienced it, marries my two favorite music genres into a new, too-legit-to-quit hybrid: the rap musical.
Since historical productions have the same effect on me as Ambien, hearing Thomas Jefferson rap his liberty-loving rhetoric is akin to a spoonful of sugar. This type of lyrical flow has long been a hallmark of firebrands, after all. “All of [the founding fathers] were really great writers and really smart … and witty in the way rappers are,” Diggs has said. “So setting these guys up as guys who are good with words makes sense.”
