The lauded lyricist, composer, rapper and actor has been known to burst into impressive freestyle rhymes with his friends, in his public addresses (check out his Tony Award acceptance speech on YouTube), and at high-profile events like the White House Poetry Jam.

And it seems to rub off on others. When Miranda co-hosted a recent fundraiser, U.S. President Barack Obama spontaneously crooned a bar from Al Green's "Let's Stay Together."

As Miranda's Toronto-bound touring musical "In the Heights" shows, impromptu song was also a big part of his upbringing with his Puerto Rican family in a north Manhattan immigrant neighbourhood.

"When you're writing a musical you want a landscape that sings, where it's plausible for people to break into song, and in my neighbourhood people break into songs all the freakin' time," Miranda, who conceived the show, said with a laugh in a recent phone interview from Inwood, just north of Washington Heights.

"It's one of those neighbourhoods where, on a summer night in Washington Heights, you will hear music coming from at least 10 different sources on any given block, whether it is the music on the radio, in the corner store, or music blasting out of car stereos.

"It's a very musical landscape."

Running Feb. 7 to Feb. 19 at the Toronto Centre for the Arts as part of the Dancap Productions lineup, the four-time Tony-winning "In the Heights" features show tunes, hip hop and Latin grooves as it follows characters in Washington Heights.

At the heart of the story is Usnavi (Perry Young), who dreams of moving to his late parents' homeland of the Dominican Republic while running a family bodega and pining after hair stylist Vanessa.

"Since we opened, I don't think a day has gone by," started Miranda, before interrupting his sentence with a few bars of the Stephen Sondheim tune "Not a Day Goes By."

That "someone hasn't tweeted me or written to me, 'When's the show coming to Canada, when's the show coming to Canada?' So I'm so excited that we're finally there."

Miranda starred as Usnavi in the Broadway production and wrote the show's music and lyrics, earning the 2008 Tony for best score and a 2009 Grammy for the cast album. The show also won Tonys for best musical, best choreography and best orchestrations, and was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The 32-year-old Miranda started writing "In the Heights" in his sophomore year at Wesleyan University, taking inspiration from his own surroundings.

"What's interesting about the neighbourhood is it's always been an immigrant neighbourhood, even before it was a Latino neighbourhood," said Miranda, co-founder of the hip-hop comedy troupe Freestyle Love Supreme.

"Before us it was Irish immigrants and it was home to the highest influx of European Jews after World War Two." Continued...