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.

Oftentimes, it feels like we spend so much of our life waiting to make art, waiting for somebody to let us do something. You don't really have to do that. You can make it all the time. And 99 percent of the time, it's not going to be a big deal on a global scale. But 100 percent of the time, it's going to make you feel amazing.

To walk into a casting room full of people who look like you is a crazy thing. What is the thing that necessitates all of us having the exact same shade of skin and having the same hair? What about this deodorant commercial needs that?

I liked being on stage because it gave me a reason to be around people. The other great thing about acting is it allows you to imagine circumstances different from your own. I was a poor Bay Area kid getting to pretend to be a Russian aristocrat.

Everybody from the Bay has a superiority complex because we're dope.

Neither of my parents live in Oakland anymore. They both got priced out.

The act of being nice to somebody at Starbucks is actually a huge thing. It's a real change you can effect in somebody's life every day.

That's the great thing about being a teenager. You think you're a genius.

My parents are not together, but they were both always around.

My mom is a white Jewish lady, and my dad is black. The cultures never seemed separate - I had a lot of mixed friends. When I was young, I identified with being Jewish, but I embraced my dad's side, too.

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.

What writing a poem really does - and what figuring how to perform effectively really does - is forces people to listen to you. It frames your thoughts in such a way that grabs people's attentions and forces them to hear the things that you're actually saying.

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 was so stressed, man. When I was 17, I was so worried about what the hell was going to happen.

Daveed Diggs is a very nervous person.

My favorite Prince album is 'Sign o' the Times.'

If you do enough rap shows, you get a pretty good sense of an audience. You start to develop this sense of what a feeling of a room or a group is.

Being multiracial has allowed me to feel comfortable walking in all different circles.

We're very used to seeing a huge diversity of white people. You never just expect two white people on TV to feel the same way.

I've been sort of gentrification-obsessed. Right before I left Oakland in 2012, I was feeling it. Now I go back sporadically, and the change is drastic.

Broadway was weird.

I warm up a lot harder for a Clipping show than I ever did for 'Hamilton.'

That's the great thing about how 'SVU' works. They work with so many Broadway actors, they are very used to getting us out in time for the show.

I get excited to create things that don't exist in the same world as 'Hamilton' because that world is really well done and doesn't need me to inform it anymore.