no description
"Hamilton" playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda recorded a freestyle rap while standing next to the president at the White House Monday, on a historic day for the cast of Broadway's most popular historical musical.
The sold-out show's cast performed selections from the show live at the White House, where they received glowing praise from Barack and Michelle Obama.
Miranda, who wrote and stars in "Hamilton," also came up with a presidential rap off the cuff in the Rose Garden, rhyming about things President Obama held up on cue-cards, like "Constitution," "NASA," "immigrants" and the Obamas' dogs, "Sunny and Bo."
"Immigrants, we get the job done. This is so fun. POTUS is holding up the signs, I'm not done," Miranda raps.
The freestyle video ends with Miranda dropping the mic, and Obama predicting, "That's going viral." The video already had nearly three million views on Facebook three hours after the White House posted it.
"Hamilton" is a hip-hop retelling of the life of founding father Alexander Hamilton that's garnered rave reviews. Already a Grammy winner, it's Broadway's hottest ticket and will go on a national tour starting next year.
The day at the White House brought the play back to its roots, and not just because Hamilton was the country's first secretary of the Treasury and Miranda on Monday posed for a picture with current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Miranda performed an early version of one of the show's songs at a 2009 event at the White House, when the idea was still called "The Hamilton Mixtape."
U.S. & World
"This is definitely the room where it happened, right here," Obama joked in introducing the performance Monday, taking credit for its success.
"Profound thanks to @WhiteHouse for letting us finish the story at their home--7 years after starting," Miranda tweeted Monday night.
This isn't the first time Miranda has freestyled for a national audience. He took on The Roots' Tariq in a rap battle on "The Tonight Show" in November, where he was challenged with combining "dinosaur," "pumpkin pie" and "Darth Vader" in one verse.
