R.I.P. Afrika Bambaataa

The ‘godfather of hip-hop’ and famed Bronx NY DJ, Afrika Bambaataa, (aka Lance Taylor) who helped shape early rap records, developed breakbeat, and defined the culture of the late 70’s and early ‘80s has passed away in Pennsylvania at the age of 68.

His death was confirmed in a statement from the Universal Zulu Nation, the international hip-hop awareness group he founded and posted to Facebook. Further details weren’t immediately available, other than he had “peacefully fallen asleep and did not wake up” but was later determined to be as a result of prostate cancer.

Born Lance Taylor to Caribbean immigrants and growing up in the Bronx River Houses, a low-income public housing project, as a youth he joined a local street gang, the Black Spades (a reformed version of which eventually evolved into the Universal Zulu Nation). He would go on to would win an essay contest, which won him a trip to Africa, completely changing his mindset and world view.

As a DJ, he gained borough attention by organizing large block parties, part of a NYC movement (alongside fellow Bronx DJs Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash) that began as a precursor to hip-hop and then helped begin and propel that genre into what it came to be.

Breakbeat involved extending popular breaks (the parts of a song containing the percussion and rhythm sections) so that B-boys and B-girls could perform their dance moves and Bambaataa was a master of that technique, often sampling completely different bits from electro, funk, salsa and other genres.

As an influencer of the genre, he helped popularize (though likely didn’t originate) the term ‘hip-hop’ itself, believing it as encompassing four distinct components: DJ-ing, MC-ing, break dancing, and graffiti. In 1981, he became the first major hip-hop name to sign with Tommy Boy Records, an influential label of the time whose roster would also include Coolio, De La Soul , Naughty by Nature, and Queen Latifah.

In 1982, he released the electro-funk track, “Planet Rock” with the Soulsonic Force, one of the all-time most influential hip-hop songs, produced by the legendary Arthur Baker. Later, he became more socially aware and spent more time with his Zulu Nation and youth education.

1983’s “Renegades of Funk” made waves (as did it again, decades later when RATM covered it), he was a part of the 1985 ‘Sun City’ anti-apartheid album and helped organize a 1990 Wembley Stadium concert to celebrate the prison release of Nelson Mandela.

He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 and in 2012, began a three-year term as a visiting scholar at Cornell. Later years found Bambaataa entrenched in several sexual abuse lawsuits against minors, causing his own Zulu Nation to disassociate with him, with other suits still pending, losing a civil trail just under a year ago.

While he never quite broke through to mainstream audiences, as much as some of his contemporaries, he continued to record around twenty albums and the influence of his early days in the genre is still inspiring and making a musical impact even today.