I saw DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's Afrika Bambaataa tribute and it was just outstanding. One of the best shows I've seen and some seriously talented people. Then I learned more about Afrika and how his misdeeds were mostly ignored.
When I open up a famous author / musician / athlete's wikipedia page, it feels like it's a coin flip over whether there's some horrible thing they've done and largely gotten away with it.
I'm still upset about Neil Gaiman. I connected deeply with a lot of his work in my youth and now I don't know what to think...
I fell into a job bussing tables and porting alcohol at a local live music venue when I was 19 and I worked there off and on over seven years.
As much as I love live music after a while it just sort of became a job, but every now and again an incredible musician would come through and I wouldn’t know until I showed up for my shift and I asked my coworkers who was playing that night.
One night I come in and my jaw drops when find out it’s fucking DJ Africa Bambaataa! Now I’m not big into hip hop but I had listened to a few of his albums and I knew his music was phenomenal and I was shocked such a legend was playing in my town.
The crazy part is only like 100 people showed up out of a capacity of like 800 but every single one of those people could dance.
The venue had an old sound booth that was attached to ceiling and was accessible with a rickety old spiral staircase, as it was so slow that night I spent most of my time up there just soaking in that experience.
I’ve seen a lot of live shows in my day but that one stands out.
Afrika Bambaataa is a major reason I fell in love with hip hop back around '82. Further, I've always felt "perfect beat" is a much better song than the more popular "planet rock". Back then, "planet rock" was for regular folk, "perfect beat" was for the breakers. Regular folk would be dancing on the floor, just like normal, and then, later in the evening, the DJ would drop "perfect beat" and it was on - specifically, this part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=229&v=rHQ11l4uiM4 . The dance floor would clear, otherwise you'd catch a foot from some dude spinning around. Good times.
I'm still trying to digest all the s3xual abuse allegations against Bam later in life.
Is TikTok how the practice of censoring one's own swears came about? I've seen it on a lot of social posts and have been wondering. Besides it being hokey (why use the word to then immediately self-censor), it also instantly dates the poster as someone too new to the world to be able to make an interesting post. That last part is just an opinion, though.
This is more of my personal axe to grind, but it's important to view this as a result of monetized content and highly algorithmic feeds. It is my understanding that these platforms don't even really remove this language, just demote it, but that the culture on these networks is entwined with people who post for money, so anything that reduces exposure or payout is shunned. This is true for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube (shorts).
That said I wouldn't even assume "s3xual" is a result of this. It smells of older censorship to me, all the new stuff is video-first, so phonetic substitutes are more characteristic.
Bambaataa was a serial sexual abuser and everybody in the rap scene knew it back in the day (early 90s) same way everyone knew about R. Kelly (I ran a rap program on the radio in 92-94).
Damn. As someone half the world away I just knew him as a pioneer, news didn't travel enough to know anything about the personal lives of artists in the early 00s.
No idea about the allegations until now, which means the news doubly suck.
I've read this a number of times, and dismissed it because there's no proof. But, I'm beginning to believe it, given the sheer amount of different sources saying it.
I can imagine scenarios where decent people in tough environments might be compelled to join a gang, rob, or even murder. That doesn’t make it ok, but it makes it at least understandable.
I’m unable to imagine a reason why decent people might be compelled to rape children, let alone serially.
There is the position, of course, that a sexually abused child that reaches teen years or adulthood is no longer a "decent person" .. which is an interesting transition to dwell on.
That makes it more understandable, but he lost a trial that said he was raping a child when he was 38 years old.
Someone abused as a child who does sketchy things in their early 20s is tragic. Someone doing the same when they’re nearly 40 is a whole lot harder to dismiss. Like, you don’t make it to that age without hearing a lot of people along the way saying not to rape children.
Oh, please, don't think I'm making any excuses here .. but I was around and about the evidence management side of a five deep dive into institutional childhood abuse ... the various things that went down tend to explain a lot of early following behaviour once some kind of distance from early abuse is made.
You're right to flag ongoing and persistent shitty behaviour as unacceptable - even assigning blame there gets problematic as there absolutely is an element of "would they be less bad had they had more support on escape", but you can't be giving a pass forever.
Bloody Trolley problems .. this is one of several areas with no good choices, no easy solutions.
Yeah, I hear ya. My wife and I like watching crime shows, and you see someone like Ed Kemper, and wonder how he would’ve turned out if he hadn’t been subject to loads of abuse. If his parents hadn’t sucked, he might’ve been a doctor or something. It doesn’t forgive his crimes but does give a lot to ponder.
If only human behavior was that simple. The DSM-5 is filled with diseases of the mind. Choice often isn’t as cut and dry as we would like to believe.
No one wakes up and thinks “I want to suffer today of _____.” [1] AndI want others to suffer along with me.
That said, perhaps the universe is binary? Perhaps evil, pure evil does exist? Perhaps there’s no to stopping evil than “just say no”? It’s hard to say.
There is also the theory that it serves as a reenactment of one’s own abuse. Trying to find peace and return to safety by replaying the scene, this time not as helpless victim but perpetrator: in control.
Victims of sexual abuse thus often are haunted by “fantasies” of abuse but avoiding the victim position; the trap is to identify with the fantasies. All too often, they’ve been told it is their fault, they wanted it etc, so the imagined replay “proves the original perpetrator right”.
The only way to break the circle seems to be to fully go into the fantasy and process the victim position, with support of a well-meaning presence (typically a therapist but in another reality it could be friends or family).
Um, yeah? You can’t think of a single reason for justified homicide, ever? Maybe a kid who’s tired of seeing his stepdad beat the hell out of him and his mom, or they’re in a lawless part of the world where might makes right and the local mayor is horrid.
I’m not talking about random “my neighbor disrespected me so I killed him” idiocy. Just saying, I can at least imagine situations where, even if he shouldn’t have done it, if I were in the jury, I’d probably vote to acquit. If you can’t, you are definitely not a decent person.
Nope, I would never justify outright murder. I don't even support capital punishment. I might be able to develop an understanding for the circumstances, but that doesn't mean I would say "Hey, that instance of lynchmob justice was actually OK." Because you know, its a slipery slope I am not willing to walk on.
That's a totally fair and reasonable moral perspective, albeit one not widely shared. I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I — living in a safe place, around decent people, in a stable environment — would ever feel the need to proactively protect myself or my family with lethal force. But every day I watch the news and see people living in war-torn settings, and I can sympathize that they might see it otherwise.
Not a reasonable question. All my information was third hand at best.
We didn't play Bambaataa, R Kelly or Tupac (convicted rapist) records. That's about all a radio station could do. Can't state what legally speaking were merely rumors on the air without facing problems. All you can do is not support them commercially, which we did.
We had a whole list of stuff we wouldn't play. R Kelly's first album was around 93 (I can't remember now) and the video of him and the underage girl that initially got him charged was known about at the time. The music and also information about the musicians reached people in the loop somewhat earlier than it reached everyone else. It's also 30+ years ago and details are not easy to remember, but there was no social media or internet. We had pirated cassette tapes and vinyl freebies from the distributors and word of mouth. R Kelly specifically there were djs who played him. This was not a commercial station so we could ban Tupac with no problems and we did. We also thought he was a mediocre rapper. There's lots of revisionism in how people remember things now.
For context we were in a big northeastern city with a good range and at the time there was almost no other regular rap programming on the radio (one other show locally). Outside NYC it was very hard to get rap (or even R&B) on the radio except in certain places or in very commercial programming (and then biz market and Beastie boys were maybe the best stuff you could put on the radio). Something like hit 107 in ATL (a very receptive market) started in 1990 and even there rap programming was mostly on college and community stations. We had guest djs beeping swearwords live on turntables while they stole our records because everyone was too high to pay attention. It was very much a bunch of kids into music convincing someone that this music deserved a time slot and one mistake and it all got cancelled. A lot of them were socially conscious and there was a lot of pushback against the misogynistic and gangster stuff but commerce won. We had issues about playing shabba ranks and the like too because of all the homophobia in dancehall. Tupac's case was a tough one because he had fans and defenders.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait and/or snark? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly; actually a rather shocking amount. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
A friend of mine has worked in TV and film for decades. Many times he has told me about rumoured offenders (typically after they are arrested), but other than avoiding working on productions with them what are his choices? Trying to do a completely ridiculous "citizen's arrest"?
That's sadly a recurring pattern with Black American pioneers.
For example a lot of early bluesmen are known to be highly problematic and the completely clean ones are rare (Howlin' Wolf is one).
I've been recently experimenting with rape as a structuring force in sociology and anthropology (when I say "experimenting", I'm mean as a work hypothesis) and I'm now thinking it's more determinative at scale than murder. After all murder takes someone out of the pool.
I wouldn't go around DJing an abuser's music but I find it insufficient to stop at signaling about it and cancelling. That's where the work begins, not where it ends.
Stopping at jailing abusers will force them to hide better and prevent the more cowardly ones from acting, but it won't stop before the process behind it is fully understood, internalized and treated.
I don't know the story behind it but there's a very high chance Afrika Bambaataa was abused as a child.
Sadly a reoccurring problem with lots of white rock and roll “heroes” from Aerosmith to Led Zeppelin to Iggy Pop to Lynyrd Skynyrd to The Cars to The Stones…
> That's sadly a recurring pattern with Black American pioneers
I think we have enough evidence these days to confidently say race has nothing to do with it.
For people who get enough power and influence they'll either become role models from a position of power, get followers and maybe even act as mentors to their subsequent victims (priests, teachers, various artists, activists and other "influencers"), or they're rich enough to think/know they can get away with anything (everyone in the Epstein files).
This brings up a point I often ponder: should the records of horrific criminals be cancelled? Consider the two extremes:
A) artist is never played again, no more royalties are paid. Nobody gets to enjoy the music.
B) the artist's estate is sold to a victims compensation trust, that collects, say, $4m/year that gets distributed to victims and charities. You still hear their song occasionally on the radio and gradually forget about their plight over the years.
Because it's Afrika Bambaataa. He invented entirely new techniques for making music - which is already enough for him to be relevant here - that influences what many of us listen to daily.
Issue is not homophobia but grooming and sexual abuse.
French ex rapper Solo mentionned in his book he witnessed and was himself groomed and abused at 17 by Afrika Bambaataa and all Bambaataa's entourage knew about that and just chose to either ignore or even facilitate it. It seemed to have been an open secret within at least NYC hip hop circle and the Zulu Nation in general which chose to ignore and even attack the victims who speaked out.
I saw DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's Afrika Bambaataa tribute and it was just outstanding. One of the best shows I've seen and some seriously talented people. Then I learned more about Afrika and how his misdeeds were mostly ignored.
When I open up a famous author / musician / athlete's wikipedia page, it feels like it's a coin flip over whether there's some horrible thing they've done and largely gotten away with it.
I'm still upset about Neil Gaiman. I connected deeply with a lot of his work in my youth and now I don't know what to think...
I fell into a job bussing tables and porting alcohol at a local live music venue when I was 19 and I worked there off and on over seven years.
As much as I love live music after a while it just sort of became a job, but every now and again an incredible musician would come through and I wouldn’t know until I showed up for my shift and I asked my coworkers who was playing that night.
One night I come in and my jaw drops when find out it’s fucking DJ Africa Bambaataa! Now I’m not big into hip hop but I had listened to a few of his albums and I knew his music was phenomenal and I was shocked such a legend was playing in my town.
The crazy part is only like 100 people showed up out of a capacity of like 800 but every single one of those people could dance.
The venue had an old sound booth that was attached to ceiling and was accessible with a rickety old spiral staircase, as it was so slow that night I spent most of my time up there just soaking in that experience.
I’ve seen a lot of live shows in my day but that one stands out.
yeah, he was skilled. Got to see him a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHQ11l4uiM4
Contemporaneously: World Destruction - Afrika Bambaataa & John Lydon (Released on: 31/12/1984) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoXGMSOIrIs
"Bruce Dickinson" would definitely say that there wasn't enough cowbell
Great bumper music for the progressive history podcast _Blowback_.
Afrika Bambaataa is a major reason I fell in love with hip hop back around '82. Further, I've always felt "perfect beat" is a much better song than the more popular "planet rock". Back then, "planet rock" was for regular folk, "perfect beat" was for the breakers. Regular folk would be dancing on the floor, just like normal, and then, later in the evening, the DJ would drop "perfect beat" and it was on - specifically, this part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=229&v=rHQ11l4uiM4 . The dance floor would clear, otherwise you'd catch a foot from some dude spinning around. Good times.
I'm still trying to digest all the s3xual abuse allegations against Bam later in life.
RIP Bam
The allegations became public later in his life but the incidents go back to the 80s and 90s, his whole career. Rest In Piss indeed
> s3xual
This is not TikTok. You can spell the word sexual without fear.
Is TikTok how the practice of censoring one's own swears came about? I've seen it on a lot of social posts and have been wondering. Besides it being hokey (why use the word to then immediately self-censor), it also instantly dates the poster as someone too new to the world to be able to make an interesting post. That last part is just an opinion, though.
This is more of my personal axe to grind, but it's important to view this as a result of monetized content and highly algorithmic feeds. It is my understanding that these platforms don't even really remove this language, just demote it, but that the culture on these networks is entwined with people who post for money, so anything that reduces exposure or payout is shunned. This is true for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube (shorts).
That said I wouldn't even assume "s3xual" is a result of this. It smells of older censorship to me, all the new stuff is video-first, so phonetic substitutes are more characteristic.
Bambaataa was a serial sexual abuser and everybody in the rap scene knew it back in the day (early 90s) same way everyone knew about R. Kelly (I ran a rap program on the radio in 92-94).
Wow, had no idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrika_bambaataa#Child_sexual_...
Massively influential guy to hip hop, but what a shame.
this surprised me as well, the more you know the respect for his influence diminishes, really sad.
Damn. As someone half the world away I just knew him as a pioneer, news didn't travel enough to know anything about the personal lives of artists in the early 00s.
No idea about the allegations until now, which means the news doubly suck.
Any tape rips of your show we can listen to?
I've read this a number of times, and dismissed it because there's no proof. But, I'm beginning to believe it, given the sheer amount of different sources saying it.
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I can imagine scenarios where decent people in tough environments might be compelled to join a gang, rob, or even murder. That doesn’t make it ok, but it makes it at least understandable.
I’m unable to imagine a reason why decent people might be compelled to rape children, let alone serially.
Well, if it gets normalised during childhood, then it frequently occurs during teen years and adulthood.
You can see some discussion of that in the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017)
* https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report
There is the position, of course, that a sexually abused child that reaches teen years or adulthood is no longer a "decent person" .. which is an interesting transition to dwell on.
That makes it more understandable, but he lost a trial that said he was raping a child when he was 38 years old.
Someone abused as a child who does sketchy things in their early 20s is tragic. Someone doing the same when they’re nearly 40 is a whole lot harder to dismiss. Like, you don’t make it to that age without hearing a lot of people along the way saying not to rape children.
Oh, please, don't think I'm making any excuses here .. but I was around and about the evidence management side of a five deep dive into institutional childhood abuse ... the various things that went down tend to explain a lot of early following behaviour once some kind of distance from early abuse is made.
You're right to flag ongoing and persistent shitty behaviour as unacceptable - even assigning blame there gets problematic as there absolutely is an element of "would they be less bad had they had more support on escape", but you can't be giving a pass forever.
Bloody Trolley problems .. this is one of several areas with no good choices, no easy solutions.
Yeah, I hear ya. My wife and I like watching crime shows, and you see someone like Ed Kemper, and wonder how he would’ve turned out if he hadn’t been subject to loads of abuse. If his parents hadn’t sucked, he might’ve been a doctor or something. It doesn’t forgive his crimes but does give a lot to ponder.
If only human behavior was that simple. The DSM-5 is filled with diseases of the mind. Choice often isn’t as cut and dry as we would like to believe.
No one wakes up and thinks “I want to suffer today of _____.” [1] AndI want others to suffer along with me.
That said, perhaps the universe is binary? Perhaps evil, pure evil does exist? Perhaps there’s no to stopping evil than “just say no”? It’s hard to say.
[1] Insert mental, physical a/o spiritual illness here.
There is also the theory that it serves as a reenactment of one’s own abuse. Trying to find peace and return to safety by replaying the scene, this time not as helpless victim but perpetrator: in control.
Victims of sexual abuse thus often are haunted by “fantasies” of abuse but avoiding the victim position; the trap is to identify with the fantasies. All too often, they’ve been told it is their fault, they wanted it etc, so the imagined replay “proves the original perpetrator right”.
The only way to break the circle seems to be to fully go into the fantasy and process the victim position, with support of a well-meaning presence (typically a therapist but in another reality it could be friends or family).
> decent people in tough environments ... murder
You find an excuse for MURDER? You are definitely not a decent person.
Yeah that was a wild statement
Um, yeah? You can’t think of a single reason for justified homicide, ever? Maybe a kid who’s tired of seeing his stepdad beat the hell out of him and his mom, or they’re in a lawless part of the world where might makes right and the local mayor is horrid.
I’m not talking about random “my neighbor disrespected me so I killed him” idiocy. Just saying, I can at least imagine situations where, even if he shouldn’t have done it, if I were in the jury, I’d probably vote to acquit. If you can’t, you are definitely not a decent person.
Nope, I would never justify outright murder. I don't even support capital punishment. I might be able to develop an understanding for the circumstances, but that doesn't mean I would say "Hey, that instance of lynchmob justice was actually OK." Because you know, its a slipery slope I am not willing to walk on.
That's a totally fair and reasonable moral perspective, albeit one not widely shared. I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I — living in a safe place, around decent people, in a stable environment — would ever feel the need to proactively protect myself or my family with lethal force. But every day I watch the news and see people living in war-torn settings, and I can sympathize that they might see it otherwise.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
this is not a valid criticism of the point im making
This is exactly the point you're making
Known murderer and robber rap artists are in prison.
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What did you do about it at the time?
Not a reasonable question. All my information was third hand at best.
We didn't play Bambaataa, R Kelly or Tupac (convicted rapist) records. That's about all a radio station could do. Can't state what legally speaking were merely rumors on the air without facing problems. All you can do is not support them commercially, which we did.
I’d say it is a reasonable question, with a really good answer.
smell test. you ran a show in 92-94 - and you wouldnt play "Bambaataa, R Kelly or Tupac (convicted rapist) records"
what key do i push for 'lots of doubt'?
We had a whole list of stuff we wouldn't play. R Kelly's first album was around 93 (I can't remember now) and the video of him and the underage girl that initially got him charged was known about at the time. The music and also information about the musicians reached people in the loop somewhat earlier than it reached everyone else. It's also 30+ years ago and details are not easy to remember, but there was no social media or internet. We had pirated cassette tapes and vinyl freebies from the distributors and word of mouth. R Kelly specifically there were djs who played him. This was not a commercial station so we could ban Tupac with no problems and we did. We also thought he was a mediocre rapper. There's lots of revisionism in how people remember things now.
For context we were in a big northeastern city with a good range and at the time there was almost no other regular rap programming on the radio (one other show locally). Outside NYC it was very hard to get rap (or even R&B) on the radio except in certain places or in very commercial programming (and then biz market and Beastie boys were maybe the best stuff you could put on the radio). Something like hit 107 in ATL (a very receptive market) started in 1990 and even there rap programming was mostly on college and community stations. We had guest djs beeping swearwords live on turntables while they stole our records because everyone was too high to pay attention. It was very much a bunch of kids into music convincing someone that this music deserved a time slot and one mistake and it all got cancelled. A lot of them were socially conscious and there was a lot of pushback against the misogynistic and gangster stuff but commerce won. We had issues about playing shabba ranks and the like too because of all the homophobia in dancehall. Tupac's case was a tough one because he had fans and defenders.
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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait and/or snark? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly; actually a rather shocking amount. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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Your comments have obviously been breaking the site guidelines and those have barely changed over 10+ years.
This is such an odd hill to die on.
A friend of mine has worked in TV and film for decades. Many times he has told me about rumoured offenders (typically after they are arrested), but other than avoiding working on productions with them what are his choices? Trying to do a completely ridiculous "citizen's arrest"?
The same thing you did. What sort of question is that?
That's sadly a recurring pattern with Black American pioneers. For example a lot of early bluesmen are known to be highly problematic and the completely clean ones are rare (Howlin' Wolf is one). I've been recently experimenting with rape as a structuring force in sociology and anthropology (when I say "experimenting", I'm mean as a work hypothesis) and I'm now thinking it's more determinative at scale than murder. After all murder takes someone out of the pool.
I wouldn't go around DJing an abuser's music but I find it insufficient to stop at signaling about it and cancelling. That's where the work begins, not where it ends.
Stopping at jailing abusers will force them to hide better and prevent the more cowardly ones from acting, but it won't stop before the process behind it is fully understood, internalized and treated. I don't know the story behind it but there's a very high chance Afrika Bambaataa was abused as a child.
Sadly a reoccurring problem with lots of white rock and roll “heroes” from Aerosmith to Led Zeppelin to Iggy Pop to Lynyrd Skynyrd to The Cars to The Stones…
It was just a symptom of the social standing of males and the lack of interest in prosecuting rape.
> That's sadly a recurring pattern with Black American pioneers
I think we have enough evidence these days to confidently say race has nothing to do with it.
For people who get enough power and influence they'll either become role models from a position of power, get followers and maybe even act as mentors to their subsequent victims (priests, teachers, various artists, activists and other "influencers"), or they're rich enough to think/know they can get away with anything (everyone in the Epstein files).
This brings up a point I often ponder: should the records of horrific criminals be cancelled? Consider the two extremes:
A) artist is never played again, no more royalties are paid. Nobody gets to enjoy the music.
B) the artist's estate is sold to a victims compensation trust, that collects, say, $4m/year that gets distributed to victims and charities. You still hear their song occasionally on the radio and gradually forget about their plight over the years.
Which one brings the victims closer to justice?
i can seperate art from the artist. why do i need socially performative nannies censoring whether i can watch ren and stimpy or not?
Should they ban Mein Kampf?
C: they go through the legal justice system which has nothing to do with music, and people continue to play the songs they want to hear
This is an incomplete dichotomy. Option a) means the victims never have to hear their abuser's voice again.
I got into this guy via this Leftfield collab, it’s a great video: https://youtu.be/KvxbFWY2Hsc sad to hear he was a creep.
He opened for Gorillaz in Prague about 8Y ago, and did a good set. Dude looked old and tired, but also happy to be there, performing live.
Awww. Oldschool bboy music in the 1990s and before.
Hacker news?
Yes. Many hackers are into music and culture in general, among other things.
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Because it's Afrika Bambaataa. He invented entirely new techniques for making music - which is already enough for him to be relevant here - that influences what many of us listen to daily.
Back in the early-80s, after learning about sampled music, most people's next question was, "Who the fuck is Kraftwerk?" LOL
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If all you can see is homophobia then maybe you need your perception testing.
Issue is not homophobia but grooming and sexual abuse.
French ex rapper Solo mentionned in his book he witnessed and was himself groomed and abused at 17 by Afrika Bambaataa and all Bambaataa's entourage knew about that and just chose to either ignore or even facilitate it. It seemed to have been an open secret within at least NYC hip hop circle and the Zulu Nation in general which chose to ignore and even attack the victims who speaked out.
Where's this homophobia exactly?