The opening song of the award-winning Broadway musical In the Heights, a production which was nominated for thirteen Tony Awards, winning four: Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Choreography, and Best Orchestrations. It was also nominated for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The music and lyrics are by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also stars in the musical as the protagonist, Usnavi. Miranda wrote the earliest draft of In the Heights in 1999, his sophomore year of college. After the show was accepted by Wesleyan University’s student theater company The Second Stage, Miranda worked on adding “freestyle rap … bodegas, and salsa numbers.” It played from April 20, 1999 to April 22, 1999. After seeing the play, two Wesleyan seniors, John Buffalo Mailer and Thomas Kail approached Miranda and asked if the play could be expanded to be on Broadway. In 2002, Miranda and Mailer worked with director Tommy Kail and wrote five separate drafts of In the Heights.