Watch Funky 4 + 1’s History-Making SNL Performance

Among the many historic musical performances to be staged in Studio 8H was a key moment in the explosion of hip hop. 

On Valentine’s Day 1981, Saturday Night Live introduced many across the nation to the budding genre, when Funky Four Plus One became the first rap group to appear on national television.

The group, which formed in 1977, were already trailblazers going into the performance. They had been the first rap group to sign a record deal, and the first to feature a female MC, Sharon “MC Sha-Rock” Green.

Comprised of Green, MC Jazzy Jeff, The Voice of K.K., Keith Keith, Lil’ Rodney C!, and D.J. Breakout, the group made their debut with a performance of “That’s the Joint.”

The landmark moment is one of many chronicled in Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, the new documentary produced in conjunction with SNL’s 50th anniversary, directed by The Roots’ Questlove.

The appearance came on February 14, 1981, in a Season 6 episode hosted by Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry. Harry technically served as her own musical guest for the episode, performing two songs. At the end of the show, however, she turned the stage over to her “friends from the Bronx.”

“We were the first rap group to ever be on national television,” Green explains in the documentary. “That is the beginning of everything.”

“The next group are among the best street rappers in the country,” Harry said of the group in her introduction.

As Questlove’s new documentary illustrates, SNL would go on to welcome countless hip-hop acts as musical guests, and work within the genre for some of its most iconic sketches and filmed shorts.

Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music airs tonight at 8/7c on NBC. You can watch the full Funky 4 + 1 performance that started it all below:

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