Rap Radar Podcast Chats HAMILTON with Lin-Manuel Miranda

Actor, composer, playwright and writer LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA was the latest guest on Play.it's "Rap Radar Podcast." He sat down with hosts Elliott Wilsonand Brian "B.Dot" Miller and discussed Busta Rhymes, VP-elect Mike Pence, visiting the White House under the new administration, being a next door neighbor to a descendent of Aaron Burr, and his plans for 2017.

Miranda also went into detail on how he made a wish list of who he hoped would join in on the Hamilton Mixtape project.

Miranda said that when hip-hop artists come to see the show, he gets the "most geeked out."

He continued: "Busta was the first [hip-hop artist to see it.] Busta was the wish list. When I was reading the book, I had Busta's voice in my head... Hercules Mulligan. Saying the words Hercules Mulligan, all you want is to hear Busta say those words. [imitates Busta Rhymes] He is to hip-hop what Louie Armstrong is to jazz. That voice to me represents it in a very real way. So when he saw the show, he sat in the front row. He's hard to miss in the back row, but he sat in the front row. He was on a red-eye, you could tell he was a little sleepy. I was like, 'If Busta falls asleep at my show, I am never going to recover. I am going to quit the business, and I'm never coming back. I won't survive that.'"

"Then we got to [the song] My Shot, I saw him perk up when that song started. And then we had this Rise Up section, and the original off-Broadway version, 'Don't this s**t make my people want to rise up. Don't this s**t make my people want to rise up.' I changed the lyrics later for the Broadway version, but I saw him go [makes a gesture], and catch the love letter to him. Then he was so in. We would be doing The Cabinet Battles and I would hear him go, 'Wow' and 'He said that?!' And then it was just the greatest night of my life."

When asked about what he's focused on for the new year, Miranda said: "The thing about the success of the show, it takes any gig for just doing the work off your plate. I just could do the things I'm passionate about. I have a little pocket of financial stability... I'm just going to do the s**t I'm passionate about."

Does he feel like he has to keep the momentum going? He admitted, "Now I think I go back to planting. Now I go back to reading books, go back to seeing movies... You've got to refeed that thing. So you won't hear anything from me, hopefully for a little while."

Elliott "YN" Wilson is an American journalist, television producer, and the founder and CEO of Rap Radar and also the former editor-in-chief of XXL Magazine.

Brian "B.Dot" Miller is a journalist from Queens, New York. A graduate of Delaware State University, he's written for rap mags such as XXL, The Source, and VIBE. He's also appeared on BET, MTV, Sirius/XM and Fox News.

Listen to the episode for free on iTunes here.

Photo by Elliot Wilson on Twitter