Earlier this month, news broke that Ronald Savage, a Bronx activist and politician and a former music industry executive, had accused Afrika Bambaataa of sexually abusing him several times in 1980, when Savage was 15 years old. The hip-hop pioneer's lawyer, in a statement, called Savage's claims "defamatory" and "false." Bambaataa, in his own statement, said he wanted "to personally deny any and all allegations of any type of sexual molestation of anyone." Since then, three more men have told the New York Daily News that Bambaataa sexually abused them in their youth. In a new interview on "The Ed Lover Show," Bambaataa's first since reports of the allegations, he has denied them all and suggested the claims are part of an effort to tarnish his reputation.
"I completely deny all type of accusations that are being put against your brother Afrika Bambaataa," he said on "The Ed Lover Show," a syndicated radio program hosted by Lover and Monie Love. "You really need to ask the question, 'Why now? And what is the hidden agenda behind this?' Is it because I'm still relevant today trying to help people across the world?"
Bambaataa said on the show that he never met Savage. Asked if he planned to file a defamation lawsuit against his accusers, Bambaataa said he had talked with his lawyer. He said Savage was trying to gain publicity to sell his self-published memoir. "It could be me today, and you tomorrow," Bambaataa told the radio hosts. "There's something big behind this." Bambaataa also cited the charitable efforts of the hip-hop awareness organization he founded, the Universal Zulu Nation. "That's been my life," he said. "Stopping violence and helping so many people all over the place."
Savage has said he went public to change New York's statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. Currently, victims can't pursue civil or criminal claims after they turn 23 years old. After Bambaataa's interview, Savage offered to take a lie detector test if Bambaataa does too, the Daily News reports. Savage's lawyer told the Daily News that he would welcome a defamation lawsuit by Bambaataa.
Pitchfork has reached out to Bambaataa's camp for comment.
Cornell University, which in March announced it had received a $260,000 grant to catalog Bambaataa's archive, is facing a petition calling on it to cut ties with Bambaataa, the Cornell Sun reports. The Change.org petition, was started by Troi "Star" Torain, a former Hot 97 and Power 105 DJ who recently interviewed Savage about the claims. The petition states, "It is incumbent upon the university to immediately address these allegations and sever its ties with Afrika Bambaataa until these claims have been definitively and without equivocation resolved."
The university issued a statement on April 21 saying it had "recently become aware of the allegations against Bambaataa." The statement continued:
The Cornell Hip Hop Collection acquired Afrika Bambaataa's archive in 2013. The archive will be catalogued and preserved through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in March 2016. The Hip Hop Collection also hosted Bambaataa on several occasions during his three-year appointment as a visiting scholar between 2013 and 2015.
Bambaataa's contributions to the development and growth of hip-hop are indisputable. His important archive will remain one of many in the Cornell Hip Hop Collection, which exists to preserve and make accessible the artifacts documenting the rise of hip-hop into a global cultural movement.
via Marc Hogan
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