So, the scariest show we have done — and it’s all been easy since then — was three weeks at the Public Theater. Busta Rhymes is in the front row. Listen, this is an unapologetic love letter to hip-hop. [Rappers] didn’t come see In the Heights. A couple people did, Run-D.M.C., a few other old heads that love the genre in any form — they came. I was so nervous, [Busta] was in the front row, he took a redeye to get there. And I remember we were doing “My Shot,” and back at the Public, it was literally a “Pass the Courvoisier” line — it was, “Rise up, don’t this shit make my people wanna rise up” — and I saw him go [mimics big smile] and whisper to Riggs [Morales, a longtime record label A&R]. My feet are off the ground I’m rapping so hard because, you know, I got into a fistfight to get the last copy of “Scenario” when I was 13 years old. It’s the only fistfight I’ve ever been in in my life. I was like, Don’t look at Busta, don’t look at Busta. Then I look into the second row and Mandy Patinkin is sitting above Busta Rhymes. If there is a Busta Rhymes of musical theater, it probably is Mandy Patinkin. And it was just fucking crazy, when the people you’ve emptied your pockets to see are seeing you. It’s a crazy feeling. It’s both ennobling and totally humbling and totally terrifying. But after Busta, everything was cool