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Afrika Bambaataa, who has died of prostate cancer aged 68, was an influential figure in the development and rise of early hip-hop. Often bracketed with Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash as one of the art form’s initial innovators, he became especially associated with the use of electronic music, which he used as the backdrop to much of his output as a DJ, rapper and producer.

Bambaataa’s pioneering outlook helped to move the first phase of hip-hop away from a reliance on soul and funk beats towards a more futuristic techno-pop feel, based around the synthesiser and the drum machine.

That new electro-funk blend was epitomised by his 1982 single Planet Rock, released in conjunction with the Soulsonic Force collective, which featured a keyboard hook from a Kraftwerk tune and became a formative hip-hop classic, as well as one of the earliest rap songs to impinge on the wider public consciousness.

Over the next few years, on the club circuit and on record, Bambaataa helped to ease hip-hop further towards mainstream popularity, including through collaborations with musicians such as James Brown, with whom he released the song Unity in 1984, and John Lydon, with whom he composed World Destruction, a Top 50 UK hit in 1985.

At the same time he played a part in defining and supporting the various elements of emerging hip-hop culture, such as breakdancing and grafitti art, through the creation of the Universal Zulu Nation, an organisation that also tried to steer the scene away from its violent, gang-related roots.

However, in later life Bambaataa’s proud standing as one of rap’s founding fathers was overshadowed by historical allegations of sexual activity with underage boys, claims he denied, but which led him to resign from the Universal Zulu Nation.

Bambaataa was born Lance Taylor in New York. His father, a Barbadian, was absent from his upbringing, and so he was brought up by his Jamaican mother, Lamarse, in the Bronx, where as a teenager at Adlai E Stevenson high school he began to attend block parties, soon becoming an innovative DJ, organiser and promoter.

By the time he left school in 1975 he had adopted his stage name – after the 19th century Zulu leader Bhambatha – and was pulling together crews of fledgling rappers, organising breakdancing competitions and generally helping to create a new aesthetic.

Making use of his large vinyl collection, which he augmented with hundreds of his mother’s funk and soul records, Bambaataa began to use the turntable as an instrument, intercutting sections of different songs to produce new soundscapes and tunes in a way that was groundbreaking at the time.

His recording debut came in 1980 with Zulu Nation Throwdown, which he produced in association with Cosmic Force, a loose ensemble featuring, among others, MC Sabu and Lisa Lee.

While that single was based on a familiar funk foundation, Bambaataa had an eclectic musical taste that encompassed the electronic compositions of, among others, the Japanese computer-pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the pioneering German band Kraftwerk.

Determined to bring those influences into his music, he put together Soulsonic Force – featuring himself on the mic along with Mr Biggs, MC Globe and Pow Wow – to explore a new electro-funk direction through the single Planet Rock, which he followed up with Looking for the Perfect Beat (also 1982) and Renegades of Funk (1983), amounting to a trio of recordings that, in the estimation of the American music journalist Jason Gross, “weren’t so much singles as turning points for the whole [hip-hop] style”, later even influencing the techno revolution in Detroit.

Thereafter he began to explore alliances with artists from other spheres, including not just Brown and Lydon but the phalanx of musicians, including Bono and Bruce Springsteen, who created the charitable anti-apartheid rock/hip-hop single Sun City in 1985.

Though nothing replicated the influential force of his early output, in 1988 Reckless, with UB40, reached No 17 on the UK singles chart and in 1999 Afrika Shox, with Leftfield, made it to No 7 in Britain. In 2001 a Paul Oakenfold remix of Planet Rock, used in the action-thriller film Swordfish, reached 47 in the UK, five places higher than the original, which had been a No 3 dance hit in the US when first released.

Nonetheless, Bambaataa was never a prolific recording artist, preferring to regard himself primarily as a DJ. His studio work was intermittent, with albums that were often compilations of reissued or reworked material.

From the 90s onwards he used his global fame to concentrate on making the Universal Zulu Nation into a rather more nebulous body than it had first been, with chapters across the world devoted to promoting, among other things, “freedom, justice, equality, peace” and “the oneness of God”. In 2012 he became a visiting scholar at Cornell University, which took on his archives, including much of his record collection as well as notebooks, lyric sheets, set lists, flyers, stage costumes and video recordings.

By then, however, Bambaataa had begun to be dogged by persistent allegations that he had been a serial abuser of young men and boys dating back to the late 1970s, with suggestions that his behaviour had remained an unspoken secret in the rap world for many years.

Although he denounced the claims as a “baseless” attempt to ruin his reputation, in 2016 he stepped away from his leadership of the Universal Zulu Nation. Shortly afterwards the group released an open letter apologising to Bambaataa’s alleged victims.

In 2025 he was involved in a civil court case in New York in which he was accused of sexually abusing and trafficking an anonymous male plaintiff over a period of four years beginning in 1991, when the accuser was 12 and Bambaataa was in his early 30s. He refused to engage with the court or appear before the judge, as a result of which default judgment was handed down in favour of the plaintiff.

• Afrika Bambaataa (Lance Taylor), DJ and musician, born 17 April 1957; died 9 April 2026