The man who is known as a godfather of hip-hop has died.
Afrika Bambaataa was 68 years old.
The artist’s lawyer said Bambaata died of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania, The Associated Press reported.
A member of Universal Zulu Nation, which was founded by Bambaata, Mickey Bentson shared a statement on Facebook, saying that he had “peacefully fallen asleep and did not wake up.”
Bentson called his friend “a pioneering architect and global ambassador of Hip Hop culture.”
Bambaata was born Lance Taylor in 1957, the AP said, and was raised in the Bronx River Houses, a public housing project in New York. He joined a gang at a young age, but it was an essay that won him a trip to Africa that was credited for changing the trajectory of his life, The New York Times reported.
“He recognized that it was time to stop fighting and time to start partying,” Michael Holman said. “Because of his leadership in transforming the Bronx from a battlefield to a park jam, most people think of D.J. Afrika Bambaataa as the architect of hip-hop. So, the world owes a debt to him, and hip-hop culture owes a debt to him.”
Bambaata put together large block parties, predating the global spread of rap. He is among three Bronx D.J.s, including D.J. Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash, to make hip-hop a phenomenon.
He, however, sampled music from a variety of genres, not ones expected to become cornerstones to breakdancing performances.
“I remember a park jam at the Bronx River Projects in which kids start pogoing to ‘I Dream of Jeannie’s’ theme song because they recognized that he was sampling from various cultures and making it work within his style, within dance, within funk, within soul, within hip-hop,” Holman told the Times. “Not only did he have an enormous record collection, but he knew how to wield it.”
Bambaataa also transformed the gang he affiliated with, making it the Zulu Nation, with the slogan “peace, love, unity and having fun,” which eventually evolved into Universal Zulu Nation, to include “all people from the planet earth,” the AP reported.
In recent years, however, Bambaataa’s mystique became tarnished after several people accused him of sexual abuse.
Former music industry executive and political activist Ronald Savage accused Bambaataa of sexually abusing him in 1980 when Savage was young, the AP reported.
Still, after Savage went public, others followed suit, and in June 2016, Universal Zulu Nation apologized to “the survivors of apparent sexual molestation by Bambaataa,” saying that some members of the organization knew about the abuse, but “chose not to disclose” it.
“We extend our deepest and most sincere apologies to the many people who have been hurt,” they said in the apology.
The group split from Bambaataa, who denied the allegations, the Times said.
Savage recanted the allegations in 2024, saying that he had met Bambaata at a club where Savage used a fake ID to enter.
“Bambaataa is not a paedophile and, in my eyes, he was doing something that was consensual with someone that he thought was of age,” he told AllHipHop. “I wish, back in 2016, I remembered about the fake ID.”
In 2025, however, Bambaataa lost a civil case where an anonymous plaintiff accused him of sexual abuse and trafficking. The plaintiff was 12 at the time of the alleged crime, and Bambaataa was in his 30s, The Guardian wrote last year. Bambaata lost the case because he failed to show up for court, the media outlet said.
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