Hey everyone, it's MSNBC's Tremendly, host of the podcast into America.

This Black History Month, I'm excited to share a special series that celebrates the 50th anniversary of hip-hop.

The series explores how our country's political and economic forces shape half a century of hip-hop,

and how over time, hip-hop shaped America.

I'll talk with industry travel lasers as we travel back through the last five decades,

diving into key moments from each era as the genre emerges and takes over the American landscape.

In our series, Street Disciples, Politics, Power, and the Rise of Hip-hop,

you can stay right here and listen to a special preview and search for into America

wherever you're listening and follow the series.

After decades of white flight, disinvestment, fires, and abject neglect,

the South Bronx was at a breaking point.

Then, in 1982, one song took the realities of life broken by the system and put it to music.

The tone of it, it was not celebratory, it was not something that I imagined even as a 16-year-old

that would want to go to a party to dance to, it just felt like it was doing something different.

That's when everything started to get really, really, really raw.

It started with a new sound.

The beat is slowed down, but still kind of funky, still electric, but pulsating,

something you got a pop too.

And that song was the message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

And the lyrics of this song make the pain of ghetto life simple and plain.

I will never forget the first time I heard the message.

When the message came out, broken glass everywhere, people pissing on the stoops.

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