[LESLIE ODOM JR.]
How does a whippersnapper
Student of rap and a Latin
Trapped in the middle of a Manhattan flat
Win Broadway accolades
While other writers kiss the corporate dollar
Grow up to be a hip hop opera scholar?

[DAVEED DIGGS]
This blue collar shining beacon Peurto Rican
Got a lot farther
By being a lot smarter
By stretching rhymes harder
By being a trend starter
By fourteen, they placed him in a school with a music charter

[LESLIE ODOM JR.]
And everyday while shows were being slaughtered on Broadway
They played, he stayed away
He struggled, but in an odd way
Inside, he was longing to build a better Broadway
The brother was ready to cut clean in the Sweeney Todd way

[OKEIRIETE ONADOWAN]
His first hurricane came and In The Heights the name
Our man wrote his future hit sittin' on a train
Put a pencil to his temple and stuck it into his brain
And he wrote his first refrain while hollerin’ out in pain