Afrika Bambaataa: New York rapper and hip-hop pioneer dies, aged 68

Rapper Afrika Bambaataa, seen as one of the pioneers of hip-hop, has died from prostate cancer aged 68, his management company has said.

Bambaataa, best known for tracks like his 1982 global hit Planet Rock, and for founding the Universal Zulu Nation art collective, died in Pennsylvania, Naf Management Entertainment said on Tuesday.

In its statement on Instagram, Naf said hip-hop would "never be the same without him".

The company added: "Everything hip hop is today, it is because of him. His spirit lives in every beat, every cypher and every corner of this globe he touched."

Born Lance Taylor in 1957, Bambaataa, of Jamaican and Barbadian heritage, was brought up in The Bronx, New York City, by his mother, whose record collection inspired his early love of music.

A fan of Kool Herc, who is often considered the father of hip-hop, he began experimenting with re-mixing old hits as a DJ in the early 1970s, he said in an interview in 1998.

His fame grew through the decade, and into the 1980s with the popularity of the genre, leading to the release of a series of electro tracks that helped shape hip-hop and electro-funk.

Bambaataa was also one of the first DJs to use beat breaks, incorporating the iconic Roland TR-808 drum machine.

He put his success down to rapid-fire changes in what he was playing, saying that, while "other DJs would play they great records for 15, 20 minutes. We was changing ours every minute or two. I couldn't have no breakbeat go longer than a minute or two".

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He later set up the Zulu Nation art collective, whose name he changed to Universal Zulu Nation to signal the inclusion of "all people from the planet earth".

In 2016, Ronald Savage, a former music industry executive, accused Bambaataa of abusing him in 1980, when Savage was a young teen, saying: "I was scared, but at the same time I was like, 'this is Afrika Bambaataa'."

Bambaataa vehemently denied the claims, but other men made similar allegations.

In June 2016, the Universal Zulu Nation publicly apologised to "the survivors of apparent sexual molestation by Bambaataa", saying that some members of the group knew about the alleged abuse, but "chose not to disclose" it.

(c) Sky News 2026: Afrika Bambaataa: New York rapper and hip-hop pioneer dies, aged 68