Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa denies abuse allegations in new TV interview.

Yesterday, for the first time since he was accused of child molestation in March, Afrika Bambaataa spoke out in a TV interview with a local Fox News channel.

Former New York State Democratic Committee member Ronald Savage was the first person to step forward, alleging that Bambaataa molested him in 1980, when he was only 15 years old. Since then, a number of other victims and bystanders have spoken out, adding weight to the claims. Bambaataa denied the claims in a statement to Rolling Stone last month, but this is the first time we’ve heard him speak clearly on the matter.

“I never abused nobody.” He states in the interview, “It sounds crazy for people to say that — ‘You abused me.’ 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’d you never went to none of them?… What is the motivation? What is the agenda? It’s hard to say. You don’t know what many of these people are thinking, what is behind it. Some parts, I’ve seen, it could be shake-ups. Some of these people might’ve wanted.”

These comments follow action by Bambaataa’s organization The Universal Zulu Nation to replace the leadership and refocus the group’s attentions on “providing support for victims of abuse, rape and molestation”.