'Glee' Season 2 Commercial -- What's the Song?

As we approach the season 2 premiere of 'Glee' on Sept. 21, Fox reveals in a new commercial that this year's nationals are in New York City, while the city's anthem, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' 'Empire State of Mind' blares in the background. While we expect to follow New Directions through sectional, regional and eventually the national competition in the City, the club will also be pushing the envelope musically, branching out from "showtunes and '80s pop tunes," to produce what Mr. Schuester hopes "a giant wall of sound."

Obviously you've all heard the anthemic, genre-bending song that was released last October as the third single from Jay-Z's 11th studio album, 'The Blueprint 3.' But did you know the song's chunky piano melody was sampled from a The Moments 1974 hit, 'Love on a Two-Way Street'? Or better yet, were you aware that the song was penned by singer-songwriter and producer Angela Hunte and Jane't "Jnay" Sewell-Ulepic, the former a Brooklyn-native who grew up in the same building as Jay-Z, mentioned in the song as "560 State Street"?

Hunte apparently created the track with Sewell-Ulepic after both of them felt homesick. "My writing partner and I were in London, missing home," Hunte tells Billboard. "Her mother was ill at the time and I was sick that summer, and we were just down. We said to ourselves, 'we complain so much about New York -- about the busy streets, about the crowds and the pushing, about the subway system -- but I would trade that for anything right now.'" Jay-Z's label, Roc Nation, may have originally turned it down, but once Jay-Z got ahold of it, he reworte the verses and recorded it that same night.

Check out the commercial below, and head over to AOL Radio's Top Jams Station to hear 'Empire State of Mind.'