Die Antwoord News

After four million YouTube views, a five-abum international deal and endless speculation the prison-style tattoos, Die Antwoord return from Los Angeles for a single Cape gig before their world tour.

Rewind once. It's RAMfest 2009 and Die Antwoord have just terror-shocked an audience primed for heavy metal and alternative music with their unique take on Cape street rap. The music is a layering of homegrown hip-hop influences over punchy global beats. The clinically precise delivery is richly peppered with spine-janglingly lewd imagery and patois expletives that would make the proverbial sailor blush - if said seaman wasn't busy shaking his bootie to the take-no-prisoners beat and fantasising about groping the hot-pants on stage. As Die Antwoord's Cape Flats rap-compadres - Isaac Mutant, Knoffel, Scallywag and Jaak Paarl, who totes a hand-axe - leave the stage, members of seminal Afrikaans rock-revolutionaries Fokofpolisiekar start setting up.

With Ninja and Yo-landi hyped from their set, it almost seems that they're loath to leave, even as bassist Wynand Myburgh and frontman Francois Van Coke attempt to manoeuvre around them. It's an odd, halting moment; almost uncomfortable, especially since Jack Parow also appears in his trademark long-peak cap. Then, suddenly, it all makes sense as the musicians combined might launches into the massive zef-rap-meets-power-rock collaboration that is "Doosdronk". For anyone who didn't already know it, Die Antwoord have, unquestionably, arrived. 

Rewind twice. It's Oppikoppi 2009 and Ninja is dancing like a speed dervish to a Wedding DJs set - a focal point as the two party-masters spin a retro '80s and '90s  mish-mash which they've somehow raised to a kind of self-irony that is part art-form; part dance marathon. Of all things to play under the outdoor-stage Highveld sky in the 21st Century, they slip into the mix "Orinoco Flow", Enya's voice-as-orchestra hit from 1988. Ninja springs from the mosh-pit he's created, vaults to the stage, grabs a microphone and starts a subversive counter-rap of near-genius.

As the saccharine-laden chorus of Enya's famously multi-layered "Sail away, sail away" chorus lilts from the massive speakers, he mutters a counterpoint intro, "Sail away, motherf*ckers, sail away". For reasons inexplicable, it's a highlight of a festival that prides itself in showcasing mutiple stages of top-notch musicianship and original instrumentation, a defining moment of unutterably South African self-hood where - for just a moment - we remembered that we used to be embarrassed about our country, but still happy to be alive. It was a delightfully cheeky reclamation of a time long past, reclaimed and press-ganged into service as canvas for the "Seth Efrican" mash-up; a masterstroke in the evolution of "zef". Or, maybe, it was just a damned clever way to funk up a nostalgic song and propel the party long past the African dawn.

How did it all start? "Yo-landi had a rave on her birthday at one friend's flat," says Ninja via cellphone on a top-secret number. "We got a strobe and a smoke-machine and eight people came. We were, like, 'Wow'. We thought, 'If we can have a jol like this, this is the f*cken business. We thought 'Die Antwoord' was a kak-cool name and we were always walking past taxis that were playing f*king loud gangsta rap or klapping this heavy rave music and we thought that was an ultimate that we can base our style on,"

Back to the present. To say that Die Antwoord have "blown up" in America is an understatement. Their official "Enter The Ninja" video, which features artist and progeria survivor Leon "DJ $olarize" Botha, has been viewed almost four-and-a-half million times; they have over 70 000 Facebook subscribers; they were booked for California's influential Coachella Festival alongside Jay-Z, Muse, Gorillaz, Tiesto, Flying Lotus and La Roux, and have been signed to a five-album deal by Interscope, the record label best known for artists like Eminem, Dr Dre, Tupac Shakur, 50Cent and Snoop Dogg, amongst others. How do they explain their international success?

"In the overseas, they understand our English songs like 'Enter The Ninja' and 'Rich Bitch' and 'Zef Side', but they think our Afrikaans raps are lekker exotic," says Ninja. "I think it's totally got to do with 'District 9' - that movie totally kicked out the door on a weird level and know everyone knows South Africa. Plus it's a really good movie, better than 'Terminator 2', which is saying a lot. Everyone knows the movie and now they know South Africa is not about apartheid or Aids, but also about aliens from another planet. I think we are the next thing from South Africa. Like one person told us, 'There was Nelson Mandela, there was "District 9" and now there's Die Antwoord'."

Archival followers of the South Africa's more avant-garde and underground music scenes might recognise the genesis of Die Antwoord in outfits like The Original Evergreen, Max Normal, Constructus Corporation and MC Totally Rad, and releases including "The Kill", "Emmanuel Rothchild", "The Catalyst", "Markus Wormstorm Is Not Gay" and "Exit To Riverside", amongst others. "Ja, listen," says Ninja, "I was smoking a lot of zol from before all the time, so I had a lot of ideas for rap groups that never worked. They didn't want to talk about it before, and now everyone wants to talk about it, but it's like an ex-girlfriend that you're not that into anymore, that other people maybe have a relationship with."

Fresh from Coachella, showcases in Los Angeles and New York and inking the Interscope deal, Die Antwoord are in Cape Town for a single show before embarking on a world tour that takes in America, England, Sweden, Hungary, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and includes the legendary Summersonic Festival, and shows with MIA, NERD and Flying Lotus. The local show is at the rebooted Three Arts Theatre - itself a masterstroke in building Die Antwoord's "zef" iconography. What can the Mother City expect?

 "A mega-zef rap-rave," says Ninja. "The ultimate f*cken rap-rave. We've check out the parties in the overseas and the jols here are way more wild. The overseas parties are cool, but the parties here are for real. Also, people here understand what we are saying, but in the overseas they think a p*es means like a 'cool cat', but it's a little bit different. We are f*cken amped for the show and we wanted to do it for even a long time. We are blowing up all over the interweb, and we are all famous and sh*t in America and everywhere, but I am strictly South African. I might get a better TV, and Yo-landi wants to get a Honda Prelude that's heavy souped-up with spoilers and black tinted windows and strobes and smoke machines inside the car, but we don't want to change. It's cool touring overseas, but you don't know what to rap about, like a rap about how larney a hotel is. We are next level from here and we have to represent here, because Cape Town is the centre of our little universe."

by Evan Milton (source)