“I have a recognizable silhouette.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Being an emcee onstage is mostly about crowd control, about monitoring energy levels.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“My favorite Prince album is ‘Sign o’ the Times.’”
― Daveed Diggs
“Acting is about finding truth and finding the way to convey the truth.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I have this thing. I can rap really fast. I can rap really, really fast. It’s a thing I’m good at and I’ve trained myself to do; it’s a thing I do in the Bay Area.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I was really aware, even while it was happening, that the discovery of arts education in my life sort of saved my life.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Writing rap songs is about flow, about one word blending seamlessly into the next and creating a thing that is possible to perform in a way that feels natural.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I think this idea of a big break is a lie.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“As a kid, you don’t have a ton of spaces where you are honored, where what you think is honored and what you say is revered.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I was so stressed, man. When I was 17, I was so worried about what the hell was going to happen.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I think people understand I’m not actually the real Thomas Jefferson.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I feel like, anytime I’m onstage, I tend to feel very connected with people in the audience or with the sort of heartbeat or tempo of the audience.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“The tricky thing about fast raps is not really the delivery of them; it’s the writing of them, with consonants close enough together that you don’t trip up over them.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Being with a bunch of people who never take a day off means that you’re not taking a day off.”
― Daveed Diggs
“If a project feels good to you, say yes. And do it with everything that you have and hope that the outcome is good.”
― Daveed Diggs
“The fact that rap has a strict meter and stays to a click means that you have to make your thoughts concise.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Being multiracial has allowed me to feel comfortable walking in all different circles.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I majored in theater. I did plays. But musicals were not my thing.”
― Daveed Diggs
“To be rapping in a musical on Broadway is just – that sentence doesn’t make any sense in my brain.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Daveed Diggs is a very nervous person.”
― Daveed Diggs
“At some point, I’ll do more McDonald’s commercials if I have to.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I didn’t aspire to be on Broadway.”
― Daveed Diggs
“The reason you write something that is exciting and visceral is to force people to hear what you have to say, especially if you’re in any kind of marginalized community where people don’t want to listen. You have to come up with tricks to make them listen.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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?”
― Daveed Diggs
“I think it’s important that your work is in conversation with artists in your community.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Neither of my parents live in Oakland anymore. They both got priced out.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I can jump really high, yeah. I’m proud of that. I’ll take it.”
― Daveed Diggs
“My parents are not together, but they were both always around.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I felt so loved and taken care of, and that’s a huge part of the reason I’m able to do what I do.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I’m aware that not everybody gets that feeling of ease walking through the world that I have.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I make the energy to go out. You can’t let the Broadway schedule run you.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I have all of Kendrick Lamar on vinyl.”
― Daveed Diggs
“There’s no reason for somebody who’s good at writing rap to be good at freestyling. They’re different parts of your brain. You can develop both skills. I’m a much better writer.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I’m fascinated with the regionality of rap music.”
― Daveed Diggs
“As a kid, I was very shy.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I went to Hebrew school but opted out of a bar mitzvah.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I think rappers spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is new. ‘How can I say this in a way that no one has ever said it before?’”
― Daveed Diggs
“Often, the people I’m working with on music are separate from the rest of my life.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Recording vocals has the same kind of physical demands as you experience a lot in theater work.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Writing is writing. It is all about telling stories, and I’ve been doing that for so long, in all realms, that it all feels like the same thing to me anyway.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I’m from the Bay Area, so I know a lot about granola.”
― Daveed Diggs
“It wasn’t until I got out in the world and started worked professionally when I realized that the people I admired were the ones who had taken the little snippets of what they learned that worked for them – and strung them together in their own technique.”
― Daveed Diggs
“As more doors open for me, I try to always bring people who I know through.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I sort of have this feeling about change in general. We can make baby steps on a macro level. We can try to shift policy, voting and changing who’s in office. But we can make huge, sweeping changes on a personal level and in your immediate circle, or just the people around you.”
― Daveed Diggs
“College was the first time I felt I really had to choose who my friends were.”
― Daveed Diggs
“That’s the great thing about being a teenager. You think you’re a genius.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“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.”
― Daveed Diggs
“TV is really about keeping things fresh and making sure you have the most energy possible for these very short spurts of time.”
― Daveed Diggs
“There’s a lot of spaces that care about what kids are buying. There are a lot of spaces that care about what kids are watching. But there aren’t a lot of spaces that care about what kids are saying.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Being on stage, I know my function. I just do the thing.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I love that ‘Black-ish’ is a pretty traditional sitcom, structurally. It functions like the sitcoms from the ’80s and ’90s that I grew up with.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Some people get a Broadway show, and that’s their end game, and they want to sit there for as long as possible. And some people have other things they want to do with their life.”
― Daveed Diggs
“The way we make history exciting to learn about is by breaking down the barriers that are already set up between these people.”
― Daveed Diggs
“There’s this thing about authenticity when you rap, right? Whether or not it’s real, it has to feel real.”
― Daveed Diggs
“That’s what hip-hop is – it’s about meeting the music where you are, and then you add on top of that. It’s about coming at it with your full self.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I warm up a lot harder for a Clipping show than I ever did for ‘Hamilton.’”
― Daveed Diggs
“I miss doing a straight play.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I call myself a nerd all the time.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Everybody from the Bay has a superiority complex because we’re dope.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Hip-hop was indifferent to Broadway. We didn’t need Broadway, but I think Broadway needed hip-hop.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I get to say ‘no’ to a lot of things. That, for an artist, is crazy.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I didn’t know a single musical soundtrack, really, growing up. Nobody listened to musicals. That wasn’t a thing I did.”
― Daveed Diggs
“All the way on the West Coast, never having seen a Broadway show, it was like, ‘They don’t want me. There’s nothing there for me.’ I’d come to New York a lot and never even tried to see a Broadway show. There was no reason for me to do that.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I’ve always been very supported. I’ve never really been sad. I’ve just been broke. They are very different things.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I’ve always gravitated toward technical music in general. I love jazz fusion.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Using something that is really painful, generally, as the percussive element for a beat, I think is cool.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I’m an artist, so days don’t start on any regular time.”
― Daveed Diggs
“History is about who tells it.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Broadway was weird.”
― Daveed Diggs
“I’ve always been a fan of ‘Black-ish.’”
― Daveed Diggs
“Learning how to get a point across is pretty useful in any situation.”
― Daveed Diggs
“Typically, my advice to young artists is not to wait for someone to allow you to do the thing. Just do the thing, and they’ll catch up.”
― Daveed Diggs
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