On Dec. 31, 1984 — almost two years before Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. teamed up for their historic rap/rock remake of “Walk This Way” — Sex Pistols/Public Image Ltd. punk legend John Lydon and hip-hop/electrofunk pioneer Afrika Bambaataa released the ferocious Cold War cult hit “World Destruction” as part of Bambaataa’s rotating all-star project, Time Zone.
Perhaps Lydon’s more recently espoused conservative-leaning political views — and definitely allegations of child sexual abuse against Bambaataa in his later years — have tarnished Time Zone’s legacy. But “World Destruction,” as a work of art and social commentary, still holds up. Sadly, it is just as relevant now — or maybe even more so, since Lydon once told me that the bonkers electro-jam was “completely not liked when it first came out.”
Bambaataa died from complications of cancer on April 9, 2026, at age 68. In light of this news, I am revisiting my 2015 Lydon interview — conducted in his backyard on a day when he seemed to be in a particularly chatty and affable mood, and excerpted above — about why he signed on for such a seemingly bizarre project, which was his first single outside of the Pistols or PiL.
“I liked the way Afrika Bambaataa used to DJ. He’d mix a great selection of records. It was just really good fun, and he was in the right place and frame of mind in that that he could quite happily play Parliament next to anything — like heavy metal, or Kraftwerk,” Lydon said of his admiration for Bambaataa, who had groud-breakingly sampled Kraftwerk in 1982’s “Planet Rock,” one of electro’s earliest and most iconic hits. “He’d juxtaposition all these things and keep the beat. I loved that.”
Bambaataa first reached out to Lydon — who had long since moved on from the Pistols to form the experimental, Krautrock/dub-influenced PiL — upon producer Bill Laswell’s suggestion, after Bambaataa explained that he needed someone “really crazy” to contribute to the track. Bambaataa had seen Copkiller, a 1983 Harvey Keitel crime thriller co-starring Lydon in the titular role, so he figured Lydon would be perfect for this role as well.
“We met and we talked and he asked me, would I work on a record he had as an idea for? And Bill Laswell was to be the engineer,” Lydon told me. “So, I went to the studio… and it took off from there. It was really, really raucous fun putting it together.”
Lydon convened with Bambaataa, Laswell (who also played bass on the single), along with distinguished session musicians Bernie Worrell, Nicky Skopelitis, and Aiyb Dieng (all of whom would later work with PiL), at Brooklyn’s BC Studio in October 1984. The session came together speedily, taking only four and a half hours, as Bambaataa and Lydon laid down their mostly spontaneously created vocals over a crude drum-machine beat.
Time Zone’s John Lydon and Afrika Bambaataa in1984 (photo: Celluloid Records)
“It worked really well. I loved making the record with him,” said Lydon. “And that’s how I formed a connection with Bill Laswell therein after. It was fantastic. It was a really good rap song, but he didn’t have a hookline, a chorus, so I came up with the ‘time zone’ refrain. It was great juxtaposition of voices between [Bambaataa’s] heavy [vocal delivery], which we now find out is the rap ideology of presentation, and my squeaking up there like an angry young man. And you put the two together, and it made a beautiful record.”
The confrontational and rarely aired music video — which interspersed footage of atomic bomb tests and then-president Ronald Reagan quoting Biblical references to Armageddon with a bloody-faced, bug-eyed, straitjacketed Lydon squawking, “Kaboom, kaboom, kaboooom!” — was a similarly punk-rock affair.
“I think we spent $22 on the video. We bought a lot of ketchup,” Lydon chuckled. “That was the dietary budget of the day! It was McDonald’s Heinz ketchup for the blood-smears. And it did work.”
While “World Destruction” was not a mainstream hit at the time, and it is still relatively obscure, many music critics and historians now credit the track with inventing the rapcore genre.
“The story of my life is whenever I’ve done anything musically, it’s never been on any playlist or played any radio stations anywhere. It takes years and years and years for them to catch up and then play it. And the bubble’s gone by then,” Lydon griped. “I’ve got to say — I’m not being self-aggrandizing here — a lot of what I do is copied blatantly. … And that drives me nuts. It is annoying, because the purse strings have always been that firmly held tight on me, and I see money spent and invested on others. But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m looking at the bright side of this. It’s like, maybe I’m supposed to endure. It certainly keeps me alive.”
Read the full “World Destruction” lyrics below:
This is a world destruction, your life ain’t nothing
The human race is becoming a disgrace
Countries are fighting with chemical warfare
Not giving a damn about the people who live there
Nostradamus predicts the coming of the Antichrist
Hey, look out, the third world nations are on the rise
The Democratic-Communist relationship
Won’t stand in the way of the Islamic force
The CIA is looking for other tactics
The KGB is smarter than you think
Brainwash mentalities to control the system
Using TV and movies, religions of course
Yes, the world is headed for destruction
Is it a nuclear war?
What are you asking for?
This is a world destruction
Your life ain’t nothing
The human race is becoming a disgrace
The rich get richer
The poor are getting poorer
Fascist, chauvinistic government fools
People, Muslims, Christians, and Hindus
Are in a time zone just searching for the truth
Who are you to think you’re a superior race?
Facing forth your everlasting doom
We are Time Zone
We’ve come to drop a bomb on you
World destruction, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom!
I’m going out of my mind – that makes two of us
This is the world destruction, your life ain’t nothing
The human race is becoming a disgrace
Nationalities are fighting with each other
Why is this? Because the system tells you
Putting people in racist categories
Knowledge isn’t what it used to be
Military tactics to control a nation
Who wants to be a president or a king? (Me!)
Mother Nature is gonna work against you
Nothing in your power that you can do
Yes, the world is headed for destruction
You and I know it, the Bible tells you
If we don’t start to look for a better life
The world will be destroyed in a time zone!
In a time zone
In a time zone
In a time zone
Speak about destruction
