Ronald “Bee-Stinger” Savage, the man who accused Afrika Bambaataa of abusing him when he was a teenage boy, has walked back on his previous allegations against the legendary rapper.
According to AllHipHop, the pair were seen out together at an event for a Zulu Nation Member last week.
In 2016, Savage, a former music industry exec alleged that Bambaataa had molested him between the ages of 12 and 14 during the late 1970s. Three more men then stepped forward and accused Bambaataa of similar crimes, with a former bodyguard even confessing to seeing some of the alleged acts go down.
“Bambaataa is not a pedophile and, in my eyes, he was doing something that was consensual with someone that he thought was of age,” he told All Hip Hop cofounder, Chuck Creekmur in an interview. “I wish, back in 2016, I remembered about the fake ID. I wasn’t thinking about that I had forgot about that I was in deep depression and still dealing with the trauma as an adult. I want to apologize for the little kid that didn’t know anybody and just wanted to be down with this thing called Hip-Hop so I pretended to be older.
“This is something that took place 35 to over 40 years ago. This man has never been convicted of anything. Let it go. I needed to set the record straight [and get] my closure,” he concluded.
Bambaataa has always denied the allegations against him.