2026年4月10日 / 美国东部时间上午10:32 / 美联社
据其律师透露，被广泛认为是嘻哈音乐主要先驱之一的阿夫里卡·班巴塔于周四在宾夕法尼亚州因前列腺癌去世，享年68岁。
班巴塔的突然离世引发了全球各地朋友、家人和粉丝的深切哀悼，人们纷纷致敬他对这一全球最受欢迎且具有政治影响力的音乐流派所产生的深远且无可替代的影响。但也有人表示，近年来在多名曾在少年时期认识班巴塔的男子指控他性侵后，他的影响力被掩盖了。
这位说唱歌手兼制作人最广为人知的作品是1982年的突破性单曲《Planet Rock》，以及他创立的祖鲁民族艺术集体。
“没有他，嘻哈将永远不再一样——但嘻哈如今的一切，都归功于他。他的精神存在于每一个节拍、每一场即兴说唱对决，以及他曾触及的世界每一个角落，”他的经纪公司Naf Management Entertainment在周二的电子邮件声明中写道。
2006年的嘻哈DJ先驱阿夫里卡·班巴塔。亨利·雷·艾布拉姆斯 / 美联社
班巴塔本名兰斯·泰勒，1957年出生于南布朗克斯，他成长的时期，正是纽约市该社区在日益加剧的种族隔离和多年经济忽视后迅速衰败的时期。到20世纪70年代和80年代，房东为了领取保险金而烧毁公寓楼而非出资修缮，导致大部分为波多黎各裔和非裔的低收入家庭失去了社会经济机会。
据他1998年接受弗兰克·布劳顿采访时透露，班巴塔拥有牙买加和巴巴多斯血统，由母亲在低收入公共住房建筑群中抚养长大。他早年通过母亲的黑胶唱片收藏接触到音乐。
他在采访中表示，重新改编和混编热门老歌的能力，成为他1970年代初在社区中心举办派对时的标志性特色。他深受库尔·赫尔奇的作品启发，后者常被视为嘻哈之父。
整个70年代乃至80年代，班巴塔和他担任DJ的派对人气持续攀升，期间他发布了一系列电子音乐曲目，帮助塑造了当时新兴的嘻哈和电子放克音乐运动。他也是最早使用节拍断点并融入标志性的罗兰TR-808鼓机的DJ之一。
“我们播放所有东西，所有够劲的音乐，”他说。他后来补充道，他的派对与众不同之处在于，“其他DJ会把他们的经典唱片放15、20分钟。我们每隔一两分钟就换一首。我不能让任何一段断点节拍持续超过一两分钟。”
班巴塔在之前的采访中表示，当时他能够利用与当地街头帮派“黑桃帮”的关系，组建了一个名为祖鲁民族的团体，这一名称源自他汲取灵感的南非族群。他的口号最终演变为“和平、爱、团结与享乐”，他表示希望借助嘻哈日益增长的人气解决当地的帮派冲突。
后来，班巴塔将组织名称改为全球祖鲁民族联盟，以表明“欢迎来自地球所有人民”的包容性。
“从核心而言，我们的音乐让人们觉得自己属于一场运动而非一个瞬间，我们的音乐带来了希望，让人们可以相信积极的事物，它赋予人们身份认同、团结以及一条出路，”艺名Biggs先生的制作人埃利斯·威廉姆斯在发给美联社的邮件中写道。Biggs先生是阿夫里卡·班巴塔与Soulsonic Force组合的成员，该组合包含班巴塔本人。
近年来，多名人士指控班巴塔存在性侵行为。
2016年，布朗克斯区政治活动家、前音乐行业高管罗纳德·萨维奇指控班巴塔在1980年对当时还是少年的他实施性侵。
“我很害怕，但同时我又在想，‘这可是阿夫里卡·班巴塔啊’，”萨维奇2016年在接受美联社采访时表示。当时他详细回忆了那次遭遇以及他称随后发生的另外四起事件。
班巴塔强烈否认了这些指控。
萨维奇公开指控后，多名其他男子也站出来分享了类似的遭遇。2016年6月，全球祖鲁民族联盟发布公开信，向“班巴塔性侵幸存者”道歉，称该组织的一些成员知晓这一虐待行为，但“选择不披露”。
“我们向所有受到伤害的人致以最最深切和诚挚的歉意，”该组织写道。
Afrika Bambaataa, hip-hop pioneer and founder of Universal Zulu Nation, dies at 68
April 10, 2026 / 10:32 AM EDT / AP
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.
“Hip Hop will never be the same without him — but 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,” his talent agency, Naf Management Entertainment, wrote in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
Hip hop DJ pioneer Afrika Bambaataa in 2006. Henny Ray Abrams / AP
Bambaataa was born Lance Taylor in 1957 in the South Bronx, and he came of age at a time when the New York City neighborhood was rapidly deteriorating after intensifying segregation and years of economic neglect. By the 1970s and 1980s, landlords were burning apartment buildings to collect insurance money instead of investing in repairs, leaving low-income, mostly Puerto Rican and Black families without socioeconomic opportunity.
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 shape the burgeoning hip-hop and electro-funk music movements. He was also one of the first DJs to use beat breaks, incorporating the iconic Roland TR-808 drum machine.
“We was playin’ everything, everything that was funky,” he said. He later added that what set his parties apart was that “other DJs would play they great records for fifteen, twenty minutes. We was changing ours every minute or two. I couldn’t have no breakbeat go longer than a minute or two.”
At that time, Bambaataa said in previous interviews that he was able to leverage his affiliation with the local street gang the Black Spades to form a group he called the Zulu Nation, a nod to a South African ethnic group that he drew inspiration from. His slogan eventually became known as “peace, love, unity and having fun,” and he said that he sought to use hip-hop’s ballooning popularity to resolve local gang conflicts.
Later, Bambaataa changed the name to the Universal Zulu Nation to signal the inclusion of “all people from the planet earth.”
“At the core our music made people feel like they belong to a movement and not a moment, our music offered Hope something positive to believe in, it gave people identity, unity, and a way out,” Ellis Williams, a producer known as Mr. Biggs, wrote in an email to the AP. Mr. Biggs was a member of the group Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force that included Bambaataa.
In recent years, numerous people have accused Bambaataa of sexual abuse.
In 2016, Bronx political activist and former music industry executive Ronald Savage accused Bambaataa of abusing him in 1980, when he was Savage was a young teen.
“I was scared, but at the same time I was like, ‘This is Afrika Bambaataa,’” Savage told the AP in 2016. At the time he recalled, in detail, that encounter and four others that he said followed.
Bambaataa has vehemently denied those allegations.
After Savage went public with his claims, numerous other men came forward to share similar experiences about Bambaataa. In June 2016, the Universal Zulu Nation released a public letter apologizing to “the survivors of apparent sexual molestation by Bambaataa,” saying that some members of the group knew about the abuse but “chose not to disclose” it.
“We extend our deepest and most sincere apologies to the many people who have been hurt,” the organization wrote.