Here's this video I remember seeing 30 years ago. It's "Cruisin" by Michael Nesmith, from the pretty-awesomely-titled album, Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma (1979)
And no surprises, but I didn't remember it that well. No problems with the tune, 'cause I had that on Solid Gold Hits 27 and could keep comin' back to it year after year; but all I could recall of the visuals were Nesmith's Serpico-style beard, Sunset Sam's speedos and his suitcase full of watches.
I hadn't heard of the Monkees yet, so beard or not I didn't have any idea who Nesmith was, and didn't connect this song with the Monkees when I did hear of them. I remembered the LA setting, but not the roller skates, the skating guitarist, the lens effects, or Nesmith loosing off an enormous gob of spit at the end (but that may have been cut). I didn't remember the overall lack of seriousness, which might sound weird but I was very young when I saw it.
Anyway, in terms of my musical education, I think of this as building on Flashlight (my earliest encounter with funk, heard it on Solid Gold Hits 22) and looking forward to The Message (Solid Gold, 35...) Not that I'd have isolated this thread out as a small child - rapping was just singing as far as I was concerned, and you either wanted to dance to stuff or you didn't, whether it was called funk or not. I don't remember when I realised these things might be named and isolated from one another, or whether I actually thought that crap mattered.
And the thing about this song is I could cite it as formative whatever path I went down. Here I am suggesting a funk / hip-hop expedient, but I coulda gone with country, or hard rock, or latin, and I could still say "hey, I heard Mike Nesmith when I was small".