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. He was 68 years old. His manager, Naf Aroug, confirmed the news to NPR.
“To the world, he was the Godfather of hip-hop. To me, he was a visionary, a mentor, and a brother. What he built — the Universal Zulu Nation, the culture, the movement — was never just music. It was a message of peace, love, unity, and having fun,” Arouf wrote in a statement. “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.
Born Lance Taylor in 1957, Bambaataa grew up in the South Bronx in New York. 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.
“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 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.
“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 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. 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. It became his first and only song on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 48, but changed the landscape of hip-hop and electro-funk for decades to come.
“When I made it, I was trying to grab the Black market and the punk rock market,” Bambaataa told Broughton. “I wanted to grab them two together. So that’s all I was thinking of. 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. 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 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.
