Quotes from Daveed Diggs

I've always gravitated toward technical music in general. I love jazz fusion.

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.

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

History is about who tells it.

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.

Being on stage, I know my function. I just do the thing.

I think people understand I'm not actually the real Thomas Jefferson.

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.

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.

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.

There's this thing about authenticity when you rap, right? Whether or not it's real, it has to feel real.

To be rapping in a musical on Broadway is just - that sentence doesn't make any sense in my brain.

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'm an artist, so days don't start on any regular time.

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.

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

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.

As a kid, I was very shy.

I have a recognizable silhouette.

Hip-hop was indifferent to Broadway. We didn't need Broadway, but I think Broadway needed hip-hop.

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.

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.

If a project feels good to you, say yes. And do it with everything that you have and hope that the outcome is good.

I can jump really high, yeah. I'm proud of that. I'll take it.