"Showrunner Lorne Michaels and his team of music advisors were generally pretty open-minded about giving airtime to some offbeat and occasionally dangerous performers, with the infamous appearance by the punk band Fear on Halloween night, 1981, ranking as a particularly bold, if instantly regretted, booking. Another holiday episode earlier that year, however, would prove more historically significant in the long run."
"The band were also invited to bring another artist with them to the taping, though, and Debbie Harry campaigned for it to be the upstart New York rap group known as the Funky Four Plus One, AKA Funky 4+1. To this point, Saturday Night Live had yet to book any artists from the world of hip-hop, despite the show's relative proximity to the heart of that new musical movement in the nearby borough of the Bronx."
Saturday Night Live served as a major national platform for new musical acts before cable television and MTV transformed media exposure. In February 1981, Blondie performed as the primary musical guest and advocated for the New York rap group Funky 4+1 to appear on the Valentine’s Day episode. That booking became one of the program’s earliest hip-hop appearances despite the show’s proximity to the Bronx hip-hop scene. Blondie’s own engagement with rap, including their song "Rapture," and their relationships with local hip-hop artists helped bridge rock and rap audiences on live national television.
Read at Far Out Magazine
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