R.I.P. Afrika Bambaataa

Controversial Hip Hop Pioneer Afrika Bambaataa has died age 68...

From ABC News

Afrika Bambaataa, a man widely considered one of the main pioneers of hip-hop, died in Pennsylvania of prostate cancer on Thursday, according to his lawyer. He was 68.

Bambaataa’s sudden death was met with an outpouring of condolences from friends, family and fans across the world, who paid tribute to his profound and unmistakable impact on one of the world’s most popular and politically influential music genres. But others have said that his impact was overshadowed in recent years after numerous men who knew Bambaataa when they were boys accused him of sexual abuse.

The rapper and producer is best known for breakthrough tracks like 1982’s “Planet Rock” and for founding the Universal Zulu Nation art collective.

Bambaataa had Jamaican and Barbadian heritage, and he was raised in a low-income public housing complex by his mother, according to an interview he gave Frank Broughton in 1998. He was exposed to music at an early age through his mother's vinyl record collection.

The ability to repurpose and mix old hits became one of his signatures at the parties he began to throw in community centers across the neighborhood in the early 1970s, Bambaataa said in the interview. He was deeply inspired by the work of Kool Herc, who is often deemed the father of hip-hop.

Bambaataa and the parties where he DJ’ed swelled in popularity throughout the decade and well into the 1980s, when he released a series of electro tracks that helped shaped the burgeoning hip-hop and electro-funk music movements. He also was one of the first DJs to use beat breaks, incorporating the iconic Roland TR-808 drum machine.