By Safiyah Riddle, Associated Press, HuffPost | 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. 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. 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.
“When you talk about Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, these are the three founding fathers of the whole culture,” rapper Fat Joe told The Associated Press of Bambaataa’s legacy in 2023.
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. 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. He was exposed to music at an early age through his mother’s vinyl record collection.
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Read more of Mr. Bambaataa’s bio here:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obituary-afrika-bambaataa-dead_n_69d845fae4b0ccb589ec108b?origin=home-latest-news-unit
Associated Press writer Maria Sherman contributed reporting from New York City.
