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We Are Freestyle Love Supreme review: A story about friendship

By Noah Mussay

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme -- Well before the world knew of the Tony award-winning Broadway musicals Hamilton and In The Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda was in an improvisational hip-hop group called Freestyle Love Supreme along with director Thomas Kail and performers Christopher Jackson and Anthony Veneziale. Filmmaker Andrew Fried began chronicling the group in the summer of 2005, documenting the early days of Freestyle Love Supreme beatboxing and rapping on the sidewalksÑunaware of how their story would unfold. Fourteen years later, Fried captures them reuniting for a series of shows in New York City that led to a triumphant run on Broadway. Both poignant and inspired, We Are Freestyle Love Supreme recalls the creative dreams of youth and why this show still means so much to these accomplished performers. Freestyle Love Supreme performs at the Greenwich House Theater. (Photo courtesy of Hulu)
We Are Freestyle Love Supreme -- Well before the world knew of the Tony award-winning Broadway musicals Hamilton and In The Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda was in an improvisational hip-hop group called Freestyle Love Supreme along with director Thomas Kail and performers Christopher Jackson and Anthony Veneziale. Filmmaker Andrew Fried began chronicling the group in the summer of 2005, documenting the early days of Freestyle Love Supreme beatboxing and rapping on the sidewalksÑunaware of how their story would unfold. Fourteen years later, Fried captures them reuniting for a series of shows in New York City that led to a triumphant run on Broadway. Both poignant and inspired, We Are Freestyle Love Supreme recalls the creative dreams of youth and why this show still means so much to these accomplished performers. Freestyle Love Supreme performs at the Greenwich House Theater. (Photo courtesy of Hulu) /
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We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a story about friendship

In case you were looking for more Lin-Manuel Miranda-inspired content this summer, Hulu recently dropped We Are Freestyle Love Supreme, a documentary that chronicles the 15-year-history of Miranda’s improv hip-hop group Freestyle Love Supreme and Miranda’s early success.

The documentary follows the group as they prepare for an Off-Broadway reunion that ultimately turned into a 17-week run on Broadway. However, the film also features archival footage dating back to 2005 that allows us to see the humble beginnings of Freestyle Love Supreme and a pre-In The Heights and Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda. Let’s talk about it.

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme: The beginnings

Their story begins in 1998, when Anthony Veneziale, known in the group as Two-Touch, met Tommy Kail, the man who would go on to direct In the Heights and Hamilton, at Wesleyan University. After college, Kail and Veneziale would start a production company that would go on to produce an early version of In The Heights. 

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In 2003, as work began on the production, Veneziale and Miranda would come up with the idea for Freestyle Love Supreme after spending countless rehearsal breaks freestyling. After pulling in their friends, Bill Sherman, Arthur Lewis, Chris Sullivan, and Christopher Jackson, Freestyle Love Supreme was born.

The group would begin with shows at The Drama Bookshop and ARS Nova before getting a chance in 2005 to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the longest-running theater festival. As the size of their audience grew night after night, Freestyle Love Supreme realized what their show had the potential of becoming.

Life isn’t linear

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme isn’t a documentary about the rise and fall of the improv hip-hop group.

Instead, it’s a story about a group of friends that came together to create a show based around something they loved doing together that, as Chris Jackson puts it, they were able to make accessible to the masses. They did so by making a show that, like any improvisational show, is just as much about the audience as it is about the performers.

However, while hip-hop is an interesting tool with which to perform improv, that’s not what makes the story of Freestyle Love Supreme special. What makes this story special is that for 15 years, these men have remained dedicated to the group no matter where they are physically and professionally in their lives.

In We Are Freestyle Love Supreme, we watch as the dynamic of the group begins to shift amid Miranda, Jackson, and Kail’s success with In The Heights and Hamilton and Veneziale’s move to San Francisco.

As the lives of these men begin to change, so does Freestyle Love Supreme as new members Utkarsh Ambudkar, James Monroe Iglehart, and Andrew Bancroft, known as UTK, J-Soul, and Jelly Doughnut, respectively, are brought in.

As the years pass and the men mature, some friendships and individuals are forced to mature through tumultuous times. However, through it all, the men find solace in the fact that they’ll always have each other and Freestyle Love Supreme to count on.

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Did you watch We Are Freestyle Love Supreme? What were some of your favorite moments? Let us know in the comments.

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is currently streaming on Hulu. 

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