His lawyer has Bambaataa died of prostate cancer in Pennsylvania, at age 68.
He's been hailed for his impact on one of the world's most popular and politically influential music genres - but others say his legacy has been overshadowed by accusations of sexually abusing young men.
The rapper and producer of Jamaican and Barbadian heritage was born Lance Taylor in the South Bronx in 1957, and came of age at a time when the New York City neighbourhood was rapidly deteriorating after intensifying segregation and years of economic neglect. By the 1970s and 1980s, landlords were burning apartment buildings to collect insurance money instead of investing in repairs, leaving low-income mostly Puerto Rican and Black families without socioeconomic opportunity.
The ability to repurpose and mix old hits became one of his signatures at the parties he began to throw in community centres across the neighbourhood in the early 1970s.
The parties swelled in popularity throughout the decade and well into the 1980s, when he released a series of electro tracks that helped shaped the burgeoning hip-hop and electro-funk music movements. He also was one of the first DJs to use beat breaks, incorporating the iconic Roland TR-808 drum machine.
At that time, Bambaataa said in previous interviews that he was able to leverage his affiliation with the local street gang the Black Spades in order to form a group he called the Zulu Nation, a nod to a South African ethnic group that he drew inspiration from. His slogan eventually became known as "peace, love, unity and having fun," and he said that he sought to use hip-hops' ballooning popularity to resolve local gang conflicts.
Later, Bambaataa changed the name to the Universal Zulu Nation to signal the inclusion of "all people from the planet earth."
In 2016, Bronx political activist and former music industry executive Ronald Savage accused Bambaataa of abusing him in 1980, when Savage was a young teen.
"I was scared, but at the same time I was like, 'This is Afrika Bambaataa,' " Savage told the AP in 2016. At the time he recalled, in detail, that encounter and four others that he said followed.
Bambaataa has vehemently denied those allegations.
After Savage went public with his claims, numerous other men came forward to share similar experiences about Bambaataa. In June 2016, the Universal Zulu Nation released a public letter apologising to "the survivors of apparent sexual molestation by Bambaataa" saying that some members of the group knew about the abuse but "chose not to disclose" it.
"We extend our deepest and most sincere apologies to the many people who have been hurt," organisation wrote.
