“I really wanted the hip-hop community to embrace Hamilton because it’s such a love letter to them,” says Lin-Manuel Miranda about the biggest and most original hit musical on Broadway in decades. The Tony Award-winning Miranda wrote the book, music, and lyrics, and stars in the hip-hop musical about Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Now he’s teaming up with the Roots’ Questlove—who executive-produced the show’s Grammy-winning cast album—for The Hamilton Mixtape. Here, Miranda and Questlove talk with Lisa Robinson about plans for that album, which will be out this year and will include cover songs from Hamilton as well as original material inspired by the groundbreaking show.

LISA ROBINSON: What is The Hamilton Mixtape?

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: Originally, that’s what my idea was. To me, Hamilton was a hip-hop artist. He used his words to get everywhere. He also ruined his life using those verbal abilities. I thought of this as a concept album like Jesus Christ Superstar; that was an album before it was staged as a show. I wanted to write really dense, fun lyrics like my favorite hip-hop artists did. I thought I would write a bunch of great songs that tell the greatest hits of Hamilton’s life, have artists cover it, and someone else would stage it later. When I first said, ‘hip-hop, Founding Fathers,’ they thought it was a spoof. But the show makes its own case.

QUESTLOVE: Had it been described to me what this play was, I probably would have made an excuse not to come. Unfortunately, that’s where the Tupac [Shakur] musical fell. It was overhyped, and just to hear ‘Tupac, the musical’ ...

L.R.: It sounds like Spinal Tap.

Q.: I’ve been part of at least seven or eight powwows—like, ‘O.K., we’re going to do the first ... ’ I’ve been there for the Super Fly meeting, the Wild Style meeting.

L.R.: Now there’ll be a slew of Hamilton imitations.

Q.: Oh, it’s coming.

L.R.: Lin, did you always want Questlove to be involved with the cast album and this mixtape?

L-M.M.: That was the dream. The Roots played my Spring Fling senior year at [Wesleyan] college, and I was a huge fan of the Roots’ albums.

Q.: I didn’t think anything would affect me the way Fela! had. That was the loudest, most offensive, most immersive play I’ve ever seen. Everyone who sold me on Hamilton—Common, Latifah—all said the same thing: that I wouldn’t know what I was going into.

L.R.: Lin, it’s kind of amazing that you took Ron Chernow’s massive Hamilton biography on vacation and thought, Hamilton ... hip-hop ... eureka! Did you ever have any doubts about it?

L-M.M.: I never had any doubts about the idea. But the most nervous I was was when the first hip-hop artist came to see the show at the Public Theater. It was Busta Rhymes; he sat in the front row—but even if he sat in the back I would have seen him. You don’t miss Busta. He’s like Mount Rushmore to me. So when he came backstage and said he was so moved by it, I thought, We’re going to be O.K.

Q.: The brilliant thing about this whole project was and is that this project has legs beyond just the play and the cast album.

L.R.: In addition to rap, the Hamilton score has R&B, some jazz, and ballads. Is the Mixtape album going to be as musically varied? Who’s going to be on it?

Q.: So far, Busta Rhymes, Ben Folds, Regina Spektor, Latifah, Common, Chance the Rapper, and others. People are coming out of the woodwork, knocking on the door. Half the songs are cover versions of songs in the show, and the others are interpolations—we’ll take some of this, some of that, and make something new out of it.

L-M.M.: I’m not going to be on it because for me the goal is to keep this inspired by the original. But it is funny that this was my first idea, and now it’s come full cycle and coming after the show.

Q.: Hamilton is the balance that hip-hop needed. It’s changing the conversation. The amount of people in my apartment building treating me different now ... This is a key moment for Broadway and for music.