In April, one of hip-hop’s revered figures, Afrika Bambaataa, was accused of sexual molestation by a former music industry executive named Ronald Savage.
The 50-year-old revealed to the New York Daily News that at the age of 15, Bambaataa sexually abused him, and lived with this troubled occurrence for 36 years. “I wanted him to know how much he damaged me growing up. I was just a child. Why did he take my innocence away? Why did he do this to me?” Savage said.
Now, Bambaataa is speaking out against the allegations in a new interview with FOX 5. He sat down with broadcast journalist Lisa Evers and said he wanted to know what is “the motivation, what is the agenda?” behind the recent sexual abuse accusations.
“I never abused nobody. You know, it just sounds crazy to people to say that, hear ‘you abused me,'” he 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?”
However, one of the “Planet Rock” artist’s ex-bodyguards, Shamsideen Shariyf Ali, revealed that he’s witnessed Bambaataa’s alleged molestation of teen boys all the way back to the 1970s.
“I’ve seen them camped, asking him for money. He travels with late teens, those are the ones he takes overseas with him,” he said. “When I went with him on tour in the states, I’d stay in one room, and he would have boys in the room with him…Since the 70s, it’s been hundreds…I can say I’ve walked in on stuff where I say, what the f–k is going on?”
Watch the news segment below.