A warning, this podcast includes explicit language, and the N-word can be heard multiple times.

Hip-hop is a global phenomenon, but it's also deeply personal.

Which got us wondering, what makes for an unshakable rap verse?

The kind that shifts your world view, and sticks around years after the first time you encountered it.

I'm Aisha Harris, and this month marks 50 years since the birth of hip-hop.

So today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're reflecting on the hip-hop verses that changed our lives.

We reach out to some of our NPR colleagues and a few hip-hop luminaries and got some illuminating responses.

I'm Sidney Madden, one of the go-hosts of louder than a riot bar guest.

So many hip-hop songs, so many hip-hop verses have changed my life, but I went right back to college

and I went right back to Section 80.

Section 80 is Kendrick Lamar's debut album before his major, the mixtape off TDE.

So Section 80 is definitely the album that sparked something in me.

And on Section 80, High Power is really the song that turned me on and activated me to what it means to struggle with all these complicated emotions as a black person living in America.

For me personally, it was my college age years where you're literally learning to unlearn a lot of things.

High Power was just that constant, consistent soundtrack for that.

And it floats in so beautifully, it's not like a dissertation, it's not like a lecture coming at you.

It's Kendrick speaking from the bottom of his soul, like the souls of his shoes and the soul within his heart, you know?

When I heard High Power, it felt himnal, it felt personal, and it felt like it was really speaking directly to me in a way that other conscious rap albums or conscious rap songs hadn't quite felt before.

So in the third verse, after the bridge, after Laurie Joe says, every day we fight the system to make our way, we've been down too.

He comes through and he just plants an image of your head and said, who said a black man was in the Illuminati?

No conspiracy, my fate is inevitable. They play musical chairs at once, I'm on that pedestal.

He's a master builder of turns, of phrases, of syllables, similes, and he's going to make you run back the track a few times, every single time.

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