KRS-One is sticking behind Zulu Nation founder Afrika Bambaataa months after several men came forward accusing the ex-leader of sexual abuse. Atlanta Black Star reported in May that Ronald Savage, one of four men involved in the case, said Bambaata assaulted him in his youth. The 51-year-old claimed he was fondled and forced to perform oral sex with another Zulu member. KRS says anyone who takes issue with Bambaataa should stop participating in hip-hop.
“When you’re talking about Afrika Bambaataa, first of all, you’re talking about the person who invented hip-hop,” he said in a recent interview in Birmingham, England. “Not participated in it. There was no hip-hop before Afrika Bambaataa. Let’s start there, so anyone who has a problem with Afrika Bambaataa should quit hip-hop.”
The MC said he doesn’t care about what he calls “accusations and gossip,” adding he stays out of it.
“Show me the evidence, and I will definitely have justice done.”
When the interviewer told him the evidence is hard to obtain, KRS asked, “Then why say it?”
“A confession is [given] to a minister or a priest,” he said. “When you have a leader, when you are out to destroy your own leadership, others that do read and do study and are on the front lines of the revolution itself – like me – you don’t take accusations lightly.”
“I hope for healing for everyone involved,” he continued. “First for those who are accusing Afrika Bambaataa. Accusing. No evidence, no convictions. Okay. But we will at least give you the benefit of the doubt.”
KRS disagrees that no one is untouchable saying that has to be learned in the Black community.
“Our leadership has to be untouchable or they’re not leaders. They have to be,” the “South Bronx” rapper stated.
“It’s time that at least hip-hop understands this: some of us are infallible,” he went on. “Some of us are going to have to be untouchable or our entire culture is going to fall. Our culture cannot fall on the accusations of four people, that’s weak.”
KRS said the culture has nearly been diluted because “the FBI and the NSA and the CIA and these people are trying to destroy us.”
“So if you know that you have government and corporate agencies trying to destroy us – first of all, they not even trying to destroy us, they trying to destroy Afrika Bambaataa,” he said. “They’re trying to kill him. Now everybody else that sees Bam as a, you know, ‘Planet Rock’ [rapper] and this that and the other – no, I studied with Bam I worked with Bam knew him for 30 years okay. These accusations – yo Bam you got to deal with that.”
The rap pioneer has addressed the allegations, however. In May, he told FOX 5 New York he never abused anyone.
“You know, it just sounds crazy to people to say that, hear ‘you abused me,’ ” Bambaataa said. “You know my thing is you know all my people back then, you know the hundreds of people that been around me. If something like that happened, why you never went to none of them?”
See KRS-One’s full interview below.
