You're listening to the BBC World Service.

Back in the 1970s, it was common for tourists exiting New York's JFK Airport

to be handed a flyer featuring the Grim Reaper's grinning face, welcoming them to Fear City.

Until things change, it said, stay away.

The 70s marks some of the darkest, bleakish years in the city's history.

It was edgy, run down, dangerous.

Violence, unemployment, and poverty blighted its neighborhoods, but within the city's most marginalized communities,

working class African American and Hispanic kids,

were building a scene which will provide many with an escape,

a culture that will become known as hip-hop. with an

culture that will become known as hip-hop.

Hip-hop includes my passion,

breaking, also known as break-dancing,

an acrobatic dance style that uses hands and feet to create shapes and patterns

on the floor while pairing them with spins, flips, and attitude.

My name is Benyame Barnes McGee, better known as box one.

Four-time world champion B boy from the city of Philadelphia.

I'll be taking you back to the birth of hip-hop to reveal how breaking went from

inner city New York to a worldwide craze and now set to make its debut as a new

Olympic sport at the 2024 games in Paris.

Let's start by going back,

to the beginning to a party in the Bronx. Herks parties were like something you never seen before.

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