{"id":522777,"date":"2026-04-10T05:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T05:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522777\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T05:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T05:20:08","slug":"afrika-bambaataa-hip-hop-music-pioneer-dies-aged-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522777\/","title":{"rendered":"Afrika Bambaataa, hip-hop music pioneer, dies aged 68"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">TMZ, which was first to report his death, said the artist died in Pennsylvania due to complications from cancer on Thursday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bambaataa was born to Jamaican and Barbadian immigrant parents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As a teen, he became a member of the Black Spades gang, parlaying his leadership abilities to form the Universal Zulu Nation, that sought to channel youth culture away from violence and towards creativity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His 1982 hit Planet Rock, won him global recognition and is credited with shaping hip-hop in the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His vision for hip-hop transformed the Bronx borough into &#8220;the birthplace of a culture that now reaches every corner of the world&#8221;, said Reverend Dr Kurtis Blow Walker, the executive director of Hip Hop Alliance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Throughout the 1980s and beyond, he continued to collaborate widely, working with musicians including James Brown and John Lydon, and contributing to politically conscious projects such as the anti-apartheid song Sun City in 1985.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TMZ, which was first to report his death, said the artist died in Pennsylvania due to complications from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-522777","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}