The great tradition of Hamilton stars watching The Roots’ Black Thought rap with starry-eyed adoration continues.
Watch: Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs and Black Thought rap against voter suppression
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.
Last month it was Lin-Manuel Miranda, watching Black Thought rap about guacamole on The Tonight Show. And on Monday night, Daveed Diggs (who originated the roles of Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton) stopped by to rap about the election.
“You already have one of the greatest rappers in the world, Black Thought,” said Diggs, “so it’d be really silly if we didn’t do something together. Is that cool?”
The result was, like all the Hamilton-related get-out-the-vote raps have been, extremely earnest — possibly earnest to the point of being so uncool that it looped back around to kind of endearing.
“I really didn’t prepare remarks, but here’s some choice words,” rapped Black Thought. “You got the power to change the world, make your voice heard.”
Diggs took a moment to shout out all the voter suppression attempts that have been happening in this election — the first presidential election since the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act. “They telling us lies about deadlines and who can and who can’t, and all this voter registration miseducation,” Diggs said, referencing the decision in several states to move up the voter registration deadline, Trump’s call for his supporters to intimidate nonwhite voters at the polls, and Trump supporters’ attempt to convince Clinton supporters to try to vote by text. (PSA: You cannot vote by text; please go to the polls.)
“I’ll be damned,” Diggs said, “if after all that blood and fighting for the right to be counted, I don’t get out my bed and fill out that ballot. Go vote.”
You heard the man. Vote.
