NPR
Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dies at age 68
+692 words added -786 words removed
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The Associated Press
FILE - Hip hop DJ pioneer Afrika Bambaataa speaks at a news conference in New York on Feb.
+ Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Hip-hop DJ pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, seen here in New York in 2006.
− 28, 2006.
+ Henny Ray Abrams/Getty Images North America hide caption
Afrika Bambaataa, the rapper and producer who helped create and bring hip-hop and electronic music to the world with songs such as "Planet Rock" and "Looking for the Perfect Beat," has died.
− Henny Ray Abrams/AP hide caption
Afrika Bambaataa, a man widely considered one of the main pioneers of hip-hop, died in Pennsylvania of prostate cancer on Thursday, according to his lawyer.
+ He was 68 years old.
− He was 68.
+ His manager, Naf Aroug, confirmed the news to NPR.
− Bambaataa's sudden death was met with an outpouring of condolences from friends, family and fans across the world, who paid tribute to his profound and unmistakable impact on one of the world's most popular and politically influential music genres.
+ "To the world, he was the Godfather of hip-hop.
− But others have said that his impact was overshadowed in recent years after numerous men who knew Bambaataa when they were boys accused him of sexual abuse.
The rapper and producer is best known for breakthrough tracks like 1982's "Planet Rock" and for founding the Universal Zulu Nation art collective.
"Hip Hop will never be the same without him -- but everything hip hop is today, it is because of him.
+ To me, he was a visionary, a mentor, and a brother.
− His spirit lives in every beat, every cypher and every corner of this globe he touched," his talent agency, Naf Management Entertainment, wrote in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
Bambaataa was Lance Taylor born in 1957 in the South Bronx, and he came of age at a time when the New York City neighborhood was rapidly deteriorating after intensifying segregation and years of economic neglect.
+ What he built — the Universal Zulu Nation, the culture, the movement — was never just music.
− By the 1970s and 1980s, landlords were burning apartment buildings to collect insurance money instead of investing in repairs, leaving low-income mostly Puerto Rican and Black families without socioeconomic opportunity.
Bambaataa had Jamaican and Barbadian heritage, and he was raised in a low-income public housing complex by his mother, according to an interview he gave Frank Broughton in 1998.
+ It was a message of peace, love, unity, and having fun," Arouf wrote in a statement.
− He was exposed to music at an early age through his mother's vinyl record collection.
+ "His spirit lives in every beat, every b-boy, every piece of [graffiti], every DJ spinning for the culture. Hip-Hop is a global language today because of him."
As founder of the Universal Zulu Nation, which included rappers, taggers and B-boys, Bambaataa put social and political awareness at the center of the early hip-hop cultural movement. In 2016, he would be forced to step down as head of the organization when he was accused by multiple men of having abused them as children going as far back as the early 1980s. Bambaataa denied all of the allegations.
− The ability to repurpose and mix old hits became one of his signatures at the parties he began to throw in community centers across the neighborhood in the early 1970s, Bambaataa said in the interview.
+ Born Lance Taylor in 1957, Bambaataa grew up in the South Bronx in New York.
− He was deeply inspired by the work of Kool Herc, who is often deemed the father of hip-hop.
+ He began DJing and throwing parties in the 1970s, when he was still a pre-teen. As he told music journalist Frank Broughton in an archival interview, many DJs of the time played disco.
− Bambaataa and the parties where he DJ'ed swelled in popularity throughout the decade and well into the 1980s, when he released a series of electro tracks that helped shaped the burgeoning hip-hop and electro-funk music movements.
+ "We would play oldies-but-goodies, lot of the soul and funk songs of the late '60s, early '70s, some rock records," Bambaataa said.
Bambaataa created a deep link between the music and social action.
− He also was one of the first DJs to use beat breaks, incorporating the iconic Roland TR-808 drum machine.
+ He was involved in neighborhood gangs in his youth and used what would become known as hip-hop culture — DJing, breakdancing and visual art — to transform those groups into the Universal Zulu Nation.
− "We was playin' everything, everything that was funky," he said.
+ "He was one of the first DJs with a vision, a vision beyond just the jam and just the set and just the records," DJ Shadow told NPR in 2014.
− He later added that what set his parties apart was that "other DJs would play they great records for fifteen, twenty minutes.
+ "He wanted to communicate to people, he wanted to change the circumstances of his environment, he wanted to change and uplift his community through music."
Rising in the scene at the same time as legendary DJs like Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, Bambaataa showed a particular affinity for mixing in eclectic genres, movie soundtrack themes and even clips of commercials as part of the newly-developing breakbeat technique.
− We was changing ours every minute or two.
+ His specialty came from crate digging in vinyl shops around New York City, and his expansive collection — which he initially inherited from his mom — earned him the nickname "Master of Records." At the turn of the decade, Bambaataa formed two rap crews, the Jazzy 5 and the Soulsonic Force.
In 1982, Bambaataa shifted from playing music with traditional live instrumentation to exploring electronic music, infusing elements from Kraftwerk songs into his breakout hit "Planet Rock," which incorporated drum machines, synths and futuristic vocals.
− I couldn't have no breakbeat go longer than a minute or two."
At that time, Bambaataa said in previous interviews that he was able to leverage his affiliation with the local street gang the Black Spades in order to form a group he called the Zulu Nation, a nod to a South African ethnic group that he drew inspiration from.
+ It became his first and only song on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, peaking at No.
− His slogan eventually became known as "peace, love, unity and having fun," and he said that he sought to use hip-hops' ballooning popularity to resolve local gang conflicts.
+ 48, but changed the landscape of hip-hop and electro-funk for decades to come.
− Later, Bambaataa changed the name to the Universal Zulu Nation to signal the inclusion of "all people from the planet earth."
"At the core our music made people feel like they belong to a movement and not a moment, our music offered Hope something positive to believe in, it gave people identity, unity, and a way out," Ellis Williams, a producer known as Mr.
+ "When I made it, I was trying to grab the Black market and the punk rock market," Bambaataa told Broughton.
− Biggs, wrote in an email to the AP.
+ "I wanted to grab them two together.
− Mr.
+ So that's all I was thinking of.
− Biggs was a member of the group Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force that included Bambaataa.
In recent years, numerous people have accused Bambaataa of sexual abuse.
In 2016, Bronx political activist and former music industry executive Ronald Savage accused Bambaataa of abusing him in 1980, when he was Savage was a young teen.
"I was scared, but at the same time I was like, 'This is Afrika Bambaataa,' " Savage told the AP in 2016.
+ I wasn't thinking of the world and the rest of that."
He began touring internationally with other members of Zulu Nation, helping turn hip-hop into a global phenomenon.
− At the time he recalled, in detail, that encounter and four others that he said followed.
Bambaataa has vehemently denied those allegations.
After Savage went public with his claims, numerous other men came forward to share similar experiences about Bambaataa.
+ In 1985, he helped produce the anti-apartheid song "Sun City."
Bambaataa continued releasing music for decades to come and was appointed a visiting scholar at Cornell University in 2012.
− In June 2016, the Universal Zulu Nation released a public letter apologizing to "the survivors of apparent sexual molestation by Bambaataa" saying that some members of the group knew about the abuse but "chose not to disclose" it.
+ In 2016, several men accused Bambaataa of sexually abusing them when they were minors, dating back to the 1980s.The allegations harmed Bambaataa's legacy and reputation. He repeatedly denied the accusations. In 2025, he lost a civil suit alleging that he abused a 12-year-old boy in 1991 when he did not address the lawsuit or show up to court.
− "We extend our deepest and most sincere apologies to the many people who have been hurt," organization wrote.