Their major label debut Ten$ion segues between grungey bro-stepped rave rap travesties ( Never Le Nkemise), bulimic gang-bangers ( Fok Julle Naaiers), paedo-pop skits about fucking with the fame game ( Uncle Jimmy) and HI-NRG Sigue Sigue Sputnik synth-pop carpet rides ( Fatty Boom Boom).Īll this could be forgiven and we tried. They are childhood innocence morphed into adult perversion.Įven their music is an exercise in politically incorrect artifice. They are Harmony Korine's Bunny Boy copulating with Paul McCarthy's rabbit-headed flaccid-phallused Spaghetti Man. They are Araminta De Clermont's prison-inked Cape Flats gangsters. They are Roger Ballen's mutant psycho-sexual urchins, orphans and outlanders. They are the white trash Afrikaner ghosts that haunt David Goldblatt's photography. Rather than trying to 'keep it real', Die Antwoord turned to pure representation. Die Antwoord is a deep plunge into the white South African subconscious in all its ugliness – its child predators and body dysmorphia, its castrations and mutations, its hate crimes and neuroses.Īnd yet they've done it all so artfully, with so much artifice. From Ninja's prison tattooed torso, Yo-landi's pre-teen porn doll posturing and their 'incestuous' sibling spiel to their potty-mouthed Afrikaans rap. Rather than cultured and progressive, they've presented us as savage, crass, backwards, a freak show. Instead, over the past two years they've turned out to be our worst nightmare. Here, finally was the answer to our dreams: the great white hope that would feed our thirst for international recognition. In weeks they'd signed to major US label Interscope, the home of superstars such as Eminem and Lady Gaga. In a matter of hours they were trending on Twitter. Ninja and Yo-landi had been given the thumbs up on Twitter by everyone from tastemaker Diplo and pop 'it' girl Katy Perry to nu-metal messiah Fred Durst. When Die Antwoord's Enter the Ninja video went viral on YouTube back in early 2010, the South African media should've been ecstatic.

Die antwoord tour south africa