How did you come up with the rap song 'No Tears For Caesar'?

How did you come up with the rap song 'No Tears For Caesar'?

William Shatner (Author) gives expert video advice on: Is it true you like Hip-Hop music?; How did you come up with the rap song 'No Tears For Caesar'?; How did singer-songwriter Ben Folds help you create your album 'Has Been'? and more...

So I met -- I haven't told this story in a long time -- so I met with a rap group. I said, "Well, let me explain to you what this Shakespeare play was about, and what this guy was doing, what this guy, Mark Antony, was doing over the funeral of his friend who was killed, and the enemy is all around, and he's got to give a eulogy, and he doesn't know what to do, and how is he going to say these words over the body of the man he loved without invoking his own death, and death and destruction, and it was a very touchy time." The guy said, "I got it. I got it. No tears for Caesar." Great title. And this artist, this kid off the street, starts writing furiously. I'm looking at what he's writing, and he's got words, and it's just exactly what I had said about poetry. He, without having studied -- I presume -- having studied poetry, but having the knowledge. He had the knowledge in his soul. He's writing furiously, and we sort of practiced around, and sometime later he had written a rap version of "Friends, Romans, and Countrymen". It goes into "No Tears for Caesar". The title of the song was called "No Tears for Caesar".