Lin-Manuel Miranda Is Teaching Neal Katyal To Rap As Impeachment Enters Its Broadway Phase

The burgeoning career of MC Former SG.

By the very nature of the so-called swamp, the Washington Post Style section often bleeds into political coverage. It’s often more fascinating than the main section of the paper since it usually details how the “very serious ideologues” that whip the country into Manichaean hatred all day actually sip cocktails in Georgetown townhouses together at night.

It’s exactly this kind of party that sets the scene for its recent profile piece on Neal Katyal, describing the launch of his plain language primer on impeachment helpfully titled Impeach (affiliate link) (also available in our handy holiday gift guide). In this case, it was Kalorama instead of Georgetown, but who’s keeping score? A Republican strategist, Juleanna Glover, threw the party. Michael Hayden and George Conway came by to hang out. But the star was obviously Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal, who had just — with the aid of Sam Koppelman — churned out a couple hundred pages in the span of about two weeks. Par for the course in a Biglaw litigation practice of course, but to craft a best-seller and get it through the world of publishing in that time is something to behold.

There’s a lot to say about the arguments advanced in Katyal’s book, and if you’re interested in all that you should check out the recent Above the Law interview with Katyal. But what’s stuck out of the society pages was a seemingly innocuous paragraph about how busy it is to be a high-profile Biglaw great:

Katyal didn’t immediately agree to take on the project. He had other things going on: he had to prepare for a death penalty case he’d be arguing in front of the Supreme Court in December; he had Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Love Supreme improvisational rap classes on Tuesdays in New York (mostly for fun, he said, though the improved mental elasticity could be helpful for the rat-a-tat rapport of his now-frequent television appearances); and there was that voice track he was supposed to record with members of the band the National for a charity album benefiting Planned Parenthood.

Wait… what? “[H]e had Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Love Supreme improvisational rap classes on Tuesdays in New York….” Catalog this for that Jeopardy category about the music careers of legal luminaries. The Freestyle Love Supreme Academy is an 8-week course covering “beatboxing, improv skills, word flow, and speaking truthfully through music.”

Can we get Paul Clement in these classes to set up a real Hamilton-style oral argument? Justice Ginsburg’s traded on this Notorious RBG name for a while now, give her a chance to earn it!

This is a facet of Katyal’s story that deserves more exploration! Why is the Washington Post spending more time telling me about the cheese pizza Michael Hayden ate than describing Katyal in a hoody jumping up and down to hype himself up before busting out on stage? At least the article makes clear that George Conway is absolutely auditioning to be Katyal’s hype man.

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Will MC Former SG be dropping a single? “Impeachin’ ain’t easy, but it’s necessary” perhaps?

Sushi, cocktails, roasts and one lawyer’s plan to deal with ‘a national emergency’ [Washington Post]


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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