US rap pioneer Kidd Creole, who helped found the band Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, was sentenced to 16 years in prison on Wednesday for fatally stabbing a homeless man in 2017.

The 62-year-old musician, whose real name is Nathaniel Glover, was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter by a New York court last month.

He was convicted of stabbing 55-year-old victim John Jolly twice in the chest with a knife following a verbal exchange on a Manhattan street.

Jolly was found with multiple knife wounds to the torso, and died on the way to hospital.

Kidd Creole was a founding member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the first rap band to be inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 2007.

The groundbreaking band formed in the 1970s in the Bronx, when rap and hip hop were still in their early stages, and was considered a pioneer of the style.

In 1982, they had their biggest hit with The Message, which was listed as 51 on the Rolling Stone top 500 songs of all time.

It was the first hit single to depict life in New York’s dangerous ghettos in the early 1980s.