The legacy of Afrika Bambaataa as a hip-hop pioneer is a complicated one due to the heinous allegations that surfaced last decade. They followed him into this one as well, and according to Pitchfork, he has now lost a major lawsuit against him.
A 2021 lawsuit from an anonymous man accused the DJ of sexual abuse and sex trafficking, allegedly starting when the John Doe was 12 years old. The supposed timeframe of 1991 to 1995 for these alleged crimes suggests Bambaataa would've been 33 or 34 years old when the alleged abuse began.
Since he never legally responded to these allegations, Judge Alexander M. Tisch granted Doe a default judgement "without opposition" in New York court. "An assessment of damages against defendant Lance Taylor shall be referred to a Special Referee for inquest," online court documents reportedly indicate.
This anonymous lawsuit emerged about five years after Afrika Bambaataa's allegations blew up. This was thanks to accusations from Ronald Savage, who claims he sexually abused him as a minor in the 1980s. Bambaataa denied these accusations and many others which emerged in its wake, and refrained from the public eye ever since.
Afrika Bambaataa Net Worth
This follows another allegation against Afrika Bambaataa, this time from French rapper Solo. He claims the rap trailblazer sexually assaulted him when he was only 16 years old.
But as far as Ronald Savage's allegations against Afrika Bambaataa, the two actually recently linked up. Savage walked back his accusations and stated the following to AllHipHop after their meeting: "Never underestimate the power of God when he intervenes in an affair he sets everything straight."
"Bambaataa is not a pedophile and, in my eyes, he was doing something that was consensual with someone that he thought was of age," Savage said in an interview with Chuck "Jigsaw" Creekmur. "I wish, back in 2016, I remembered about the fake ID, I wasn’t thinking about that I had forgot about that I was in deep depression and still dealing with the trauma as an adult. I want to apologize for the little kid that didn’t know anybody and just wanted to be down with this thing called hip-hop so I pretended to be older."
Of course, none of this invalidates each other. We will see if Bambaataa ever responds to these allegations again in the future. Last time we spoke on his net worth, it was at around $500K, and we will see if these legal situations changes that.
