Afrika Bambaataa
Musician
1957-04-17 – 2026-04-09
Afrika Bambaataa was an American DJ, producer, and rapper who helped shape early hip-hop and electro music. He popularized tracks such as Planet Rock and founded the Universal Zulu Nation. He is widely regarded as one of the key pioneers of hip-hop culture.
Quotes by Afrika Bambaataa
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My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass.
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Somewhere down the line, the evil ones stole the legacy of hip hop and flipped it to a corporate type of hip hop. They decided to tell everybody 'Well, this is what hip hop is,' instead of coming back to the pioneers and getting the true definition of what hip hop is and what it was and what we been pushing for all these years.
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All music is dance music. But when people think of dance music, they think of techno or just house. Anything you can dance to is dance music. I don't care if it's classical, funk, salsa, reggae, calypso; it's all dance music.
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I'm the renegade of funk. I've made house, techno, rock, funk, reggae... That's why I've been on so many different labels.
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We used to play a lot of Fela Kuti in the early days of hip-hop. In my DJ sets I'll jump off into rock, salsa, African. I like to play some crazy stuff and see the vibrations of the people.
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It ain't no joke when you lose your vinyl.
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We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that's going on between the East and West. We gotta understand that Hip Hop is now universal. Hip Hop is not East coast or West coast.
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I'm fanatical about movies: African, European, Viking, Roman. I got into witchcraft and magic from watching 'Bewitched' and 'The Wizard of Oz,' which shows in some of my outfits. I dress to reflect the whole spectrum of the universe.
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The Universal Zulu Nation stands to acknowledge wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, and equality, peace, unity, love, and having fun, work, overcoming the negative through the positive, science, mathematics, faith, facts, and the wonders of God, whether we call him Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, or Jah.
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What worries me are these so-called radio stations with program directors who don't play all the different flavors of hip-hop. They should play the old with the new, 24/7, 365 days a year. A lot of these program directors are just jiving around and not playing all the good music for the people.
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How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white.
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