# The Riverdale Block Parties *A Biography of Afrika Bambaataa* — Legendary Biographies No. 128 - **Subject:** Lance Taylor (Afrika Bambaataa) - **Written by:** Jamal Whitestone - **Shelf:** Music / Hip-Hop - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 197 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **Paperback:** $19.99 — 6 × 9 in · 197 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-116-1) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Nadia Kerr (ISBN 979-8-90623-231-1) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/128-the-riverdale-block-parties.html ## About this book He was born Lance Taylor on April 17, 1957, in the Soundview section of the South Bronx, the son of a Jamaican-Barbadian homemaker. He was a Black Spades gang member at fourteen, a warlord by sixteen, and a community organiser by twenty after a UNICEF-funded trip to Africa in 1975 that produced his Zulu-warrior pen-name. He threw his first Bronx block party at 1595 East 174th Street in November 1976. He founded the Universal Zulu Nation that summer. His 1982 single Planet Rock — built around a Kraftwerk Trans-Europe Express sample, on a Roland TR-808 drum machine — invented electro hip-hop and made the Bronx-block-party aesthetic global. Jamal Whitestone's biography traces the arc through the South Bronx childhood, the Black Spades years, the UNICEF Africa trip, the early Bronx-block-party decade, the Death Mix and Renegades of Funk and the long Soulsonic Force collaborations, the Universal Zulu Nation organising and the long international chapters, the 2016 Ronald Savage child-abuse allegations that the New York Daily News and the Village Voice documented, the Universal Zulu Nation's removal of Bambaataa from its leadership in May 2016, the long sensitive-content register the biography preserves throughout — and the April 2026 alt-history ending the chapter treats with appropriate hedging. What emerges is a portrait of the founder of one of the four core elements of hip-hop culture, an organiser whose Zulu Nation chapters have run in dozens of countries for the better part of fifty years, and a figure whose post-2016 abuse allegations the music history is still working out how to write. ## Contents 1. Bronx River Houses 2. Africa 3. The Four Pillars 4. The DJ 5. Planet Rock 6. Looking for the Perfect Beat 7. The Zulu Nation Goes Global 8. The Children 9. Hassan Campbell 10. Ronald Savage 11. The Anonymous Accusers 12. The Zulu Nation's Response 13. The Legal System's Failure 14. The Default 15. The Death 16. The Obituaries 17. The Parallels 18. Planet Rock ## Questions **Who is The Riverdale Block Parties about?** Lance Taylor (Afrika Bambaataa). The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Riverdale Block Parties — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 4,900 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 59,000 words, 18 chapters, 197 pages in the paperback. **What is the printed book like?** 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf. ## The writer Jamal Whitestone is a Brooklyn-born hip-hop critic whose work for The Source, XXL, and The New Yorker established him as one of the most careful chroniclers of the East Coast rap canon. He spent years interviewing underground tape traders and neighborhood DJs to assemble his debut biography, The Hand-Sold Cassettes. His subsequent books, including The Long Game, The Quad Studios Shooting, The Howard Years, and The Riverdale Block Parties, explore the cultural geography of New York City through its defining musical eras. He avoids grand theories, focusing instead on oral histories and archival police and radio records. He lives in Brooklyn, where he collects vintage vinyl and operates a small community workshop teaching local youth the basics of music journalism.