Afrika Bambaataa, the South Bronx DJ widely credited with turning hip-hop into a global cultural movement, has died at the age of 68. Born Lance Taylor in 1957, Bambaataa died in Pennsylvania on 9 April 2026 from prostate cancer.
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He founded the Universal Zulu Nation in 1973 — a hip-hop collective of DJs, rappers, B-boys and graffiti artists — and produced the 1982 single “Planet Rock,” a Kraftwerk-sampling record that fused hip-hop and electronic music. In 2016, Bambaataa stepped down from the Universal Zulu Nation after multiple men publicly accused him of childhood sexual abuse alleged to date back to the early 1980s. Civil litigation under New York’s Child Victims Act followed.
Sources: NPR, Rolling Stone, CBC News, Wikipedia: Afrika Bambaataa
