New Die Antwoord

Jack-Flash-Jr · 2012-01-17T23:47:06+00:00

I fink I fink too much... http://pitchfork.com/news/45095-new-die-antwoord-i-fink-u-freeky/

New Die Antwoord

majestikc

Die Antwoord, McDonalds, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, all these thing's make money and are pretty popular but that doesn't make them good.

In fact, if you look at it from a certain perspective, these days the things that are most popular seem to be the most retarded...........Idiocracy.

singemonkey

LFH wrote: Die Antwoord is probably the most original act out of South Africa at the moment. Sure, it's an embellishment of the Afrikaans culture (predominantly) but we all know some peeps that do speak like that and who are, well, zef.

America doesn't want another American-sounding rock band. They have enough of those. Same with Australia, etc.
The reason why Max Normal never got anywhere is because another act was already there. And I'm saying this as a big Max Normal fan.

So they saw a gap in the market and took it. Good for them.

As far as kids being influenced by them negatively, well, that's just stupid. If kids are raised right with a good moral code then things like these wouldn't have an effect on them. There's way worse stuff in the world than this act - music, movies, news, tv shows, books, paintings, etc, etc.

And they might not be shredding like Guthrie, but they are obviously musical and talented in their own way.

Just my 2c.

But as someone said, haters gonna hate.

Another big +1.

Bewildered that: (a) people think what they do is simple. These guys honed their skills to a razor's edge. Maybe people are blinded by the zef stuff and should listen to Max Normal to really feel how good these guys are. It couldn't possibly be because people don't think hip-hop requires any skill. Because for that you'd have had to be put on a time machine in 1988.

(b) People think this is a commercial prospect. "We need something that's a sure fire international hit. Well, if we really are prepared to sell out, it couldn't possibly be more obvious. What the USA is begging for is low-class, crass, Afrikaans hip-hop. In the USA you can't turn on a radio station without hearing a DJ say, 'If only we had some low-brow hip-hop in a language no one understands.' It just cannot fail."

Anyone see the problem here? Die Antwoord succeeded because they are extraordinary performers and artists, despite their content having slightly less of a commercial niche than Indonesion Xmas carols sung by parrots.

Bob-Dubery

LFH wrote: America doesn't want another American-sounding rock band. They have enough of those. Same with Australia, etc.
The reason why Max Normal never got anywhere is because another act was already there. And I'm saying this as a big Max Normal fan.

So they saw a gap in the market and took it. Good for them

I don't think so. What sells, here, in the USA, in the UK, is stylistically watered down stuff with a nice, radio-friendly sheen to it. That's why Mumford and Sons sold for a while (they may be back, I'm betting not but I have been wrong before). That's not "folk", it's regular radio-friendly pop with just enough folk posturing to look and sound a teensy bit different from everything else out there and to allow the audience to think they've discovered some kind of authentic roots music (which has been done before - see Dexy's Midnight Runners).

So whatever else Die Antwoord have done, they haven't chosen the commercially easy path. Indeed they announced that they'd parted companies with their record label precisely because said label wanted them to water everything down so that they could be more radio friendly.

LFH

X-rated Bob wrote:
LFH wrote: America doesn't want another American-sounding rock band. They have enough of those. Same with Australia, etc.
The reason why Max Normal never got anywhere is because another act was already there. And I'm saying this as a big Max Normal fan.

So they saw a gap in the market and took it. Good for them
I don't think so. What sells, here, in the USA, in the UK, is stylistically watered down stuff with a nice, radio-friendly sheen to it. That's why Mumford and Sons sold for a while (they may be back, I'm betting not but I have been wrong before). That's not "folk", it's regular radio-friendly pop with just enough folk posturing to look and sound a teensy bit different from everything else out there and to allow the audience to think they've discovered some kind of authentic roots music (which has been done before - see Dexy's Midnight Runners).

So whatever else Die Antwoord have done, they haven't chosen the commercially easy path. Indeed they announced that they'd parted companies with their record label precisely because said label wanted them to water everything down so that they could be more radio friendly.

Ok, let me put it this way:
What I mean is that they are so radically different, people are bound to take notice - with regards to people wondering "How the blarrie hel these okes are even getting gigs, LOL".

[deleted]

Are they not causing harm? I think on this we disagree. I'm curious to know who the supposed role models are that you consider to be causing harm but for kids to be listening to "I'll f**k you til you love me. You won't last two minutes in my world b*tch" seems very harmful to me.

I know you've bowed out of this one deefstes, but I feel I should answer your question. Jack Flash actually answered it for me mostly. Parents are your role models, as well as people in public health and safety. They are responsible for finding the balance between free choice and what is the greater good and having the courage to make those decisions. Musicians can be, and often are ignored.

What musicians can do is get people to debate on what is considered right or wrong, what is true or not, what is really happening and what are misconceptions. All this is in aid of testing your own perception of the world. Fortunately I'm less threatened by Die Antwoord's vulgarity, because I know they're just people like you and me.

majestikc

"What I mean is that they are so radically different, people are bound to take notice - with regards to people wondering "How the blarrie hel these okes are even getting gigs, LOL". "

This for me is what they boil down to, it's so absurd and different and comical and over the top and cheesy that people check them out, a LOT, the same way you do a car wreck or rotten.com, but the novelty wears off rather quickly.

If you check out the top 10 "funny" videos on YouTube you'll notice they all have a few dozen million views or so.

Die Antwoord is just this other piece of fine south african art: = mixed with some cheesy dance-beetz

MIKA-the-better-one

here is the video teaser
=

IceCreamMan

same release date as VH's latest ?

find the video a tad discomforting ..... it sort of has an effect on a person in one way or another ,,no neutrality about it...

ezietsman

IceCreamMan wrote: find the video a tad discomforting ..... it sort of has an effect on a person in one way or another ,,no neutrality about it...

That is the entire point ?

[deleted]

They look like the "butcher boys"

http://www.artthrob.co.za/99july/images/alexander-butcherboys.jpg

I've always loved that sculpture, it's been a big influence on my own artistic direction. Jane Alexander rocks. I like them because, as bad ass as they look, they're just waiting for something to happen like everyone else.

singemonkey

MIKA the better one wrote: here is the video teaser

Oh man. I really wanna see that version of Avatar. It looks like it'd suck far less.

Bob-Dubery

majestikc wrote:
Die Antwoord is just this other piece of fine south african art: = mixed with some cheesy dance-beetz

Ummmm..... Corné and Twakkie were pretty sharp. Just because something's not highbrow doesn't mean that there's no craft or intelligence involved. The Simpsons is a good example.

vic

Stumbled upon this...."The Answer", a rap group from the Cape Flats. According to the info with this vid, it was shot in 2006, way before there was "Die Antwoord" :?

who cares...just interesting...note the "similarities" with "Die Antwoord" Zef side vid.... or is it visa versa ?? :-\

=

And do you recognise this gentleman on Table mountain...much unlike the persona of Die Antwoord

=

majestikc

The above is pretty interesting.

Anyway, I'd just like to publicly take back whatever I said about Die Antwoord, they're doing what they do and are some kind of success doing it, which is what we all strive towards, so "big up" to them, just because I don't appreciate it, well.......fuck myself :?

dee

Odds are it's a viral video, made to generate interest into Die Antwoord.

Hammeron

majestikc wrote: The above is pretty interesting.

Anyway, I'd just like to publicly take back whatever I said about Die Antwoord, they're doing what they do and are some kind of success doing it, which is what we all strive towards, so "big up" to them, just because I don't appreciate it, well.......fuck myself :?

F#*k you too!.....just jokin' ?

singemonkey

Tamla, did you watch Vic's 2nd vid? It might give you an interesting new perspective on Die Antwoord.

majestikc

Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote:
majestikc wrote: The above is pretty interesting.

Anyway, I'd just like to publicly take back whatever I said about Die Antwoord, they're doing what they do and are some kind of success doing it, which is what we all strive towards, so "big up" to them, just because I don't appreciate it, well.......fuck myself :?
F#*k you too!.....just jokin' ?

Potty Mouth

Jack-Flash-Jr

From the New York Times:

“We r taking 1 day / nite off 2 get really drunk wif some homies in a dodgy hood in Johannesburg called FIETAS on New Years Eve,” the e-mail read. “Dere are always fights in Fietas on New Years Eve which should be fun.” And so Ninja, the leader of the South African rap-rave crew Die Antwoord, invited me to ring in 2012 in the lair of zef, the scene the band brought to the world two years ago with a viral music video called “Zef Side.” Zef is the nasty, freaky, gleefully trashy underbelly of post-apartheid white South African culture. It is bling and bruises and weed-whacker mullets like the one sported by Yo-Landi Vi$$er, the tiny blonde who orbits Ninja like a foulmouthed muse.

On the appointed night, though, things almost got too zef for Die Antwoord. The photographer who was commissioned to shoot the band showed up to the party house with two boxes of white doves for Ninja and Yo-Landi to play with. A makeshift studio was assembled on the second floor. When I went to check out the shoot, the photographer gestured toward the room next door. “Look what happened to the birds,” he said.

Inside, a cat crouched next to a ripped-open box of doves, surrounded by feathers.

Yo-Landi once posed with a live rat between her breasts. But a dead dove? She winced. Ninja looked appalled. “I’m sorry,” he said, petting one of the remaining doves paternally.

The Die Antwoord formula isn’t complicated: obscene Afrikaans-laced raps paired with surreal imagery, like a music-video shot of Yo-Landi in a Pokémon costume exhaling butterflies. But the product is mysteriously transfixing. Days after “Zef Side” hit the Internet in February 2010, Die Antwoord’s Web site crashed under the pressure of millions of hits. Katy Perry gushed over the band; so did the Guggenheim. Interscope Records flew Ninja and Yo-Landi to Los Angeles to sign a million-dollar deal. “It’s like when someone famous works out their thing, like Michelangelo or Salvador Dalí,” Ninja told me, “and then everyone wants to be like them for centuries.”

The band’s new fans became obsessed with the question: Is it real? Word got out that Ninja’s real name is Watkin Tudor Jones and that he went to a tony Johannesburg boys’ school. South African critics were agitated that Die Antwoord appropriated the distinctive gangster style of the “coloreds,” South Africans of mixed racial origins. How dare a white band hit the jackpot by imitating a community whose own musicians were still largely stuck in apartheid-created slums? One pundit pronounced Die Antwoord “basically blackface.”

Wearing nothing but Playboy underpants, Ninja ran into the parking lot to hand out firecrackers. “Whooo!” he whooped, shooting a sparkler at Yo-Landi over the photographer’s car.

It was the closest thing to a fight I saw on New Year’s Eve. The tough-guy thing turned out to be something of a bluff. Ninja didn’t “get really drunk wif some homies,” because he doesn’t drink. Settling into a beanbag chair after the firecracker battle, he asked me gently whether driving through crime-ridden Johannesburg had been scary and offered me a cup of tea.

He was, however, unapologetic about the identity-bending aspect of Die Antwoord. The band’s new album, “Ten$ion,” was even more inspired by colored style, he said. “The gangster levels are much higher.”

That move reflects a broader change in white South African culture. It was the black majority that achieved political liberation in 1994. But whites experienced their own form of liberation. Their liberation was in the arts.

Under white rule, Afrikaans art was heavily sponsored by the government and presented a rigid image of Afrikaners as upstanding Christians — a natural ruling class. After apartheid fell, white artists were free to explore a wider range of personas. The comic artist Anton Kannemeyer depicted Afrikaners having nasty sex and mangling their Afrikaans. In “District 9,” the filmmaker Neill Blomkamp portrayed an Afrikaner transforming into something else completely — an alien — and emerging with improved moral character. “People react to ‘District 9’ and Die Antwoord on the same level,” Ninja suggested. They’re drawn to the burst of creative energy released by transformation.

“I feel sorry for people who need to ask us: Is it real?” Ninja told me. Changing identities is the point — the more total, the better.

Die Antwoord’s gangster levels didn’t fly at Interscope, however. The label balked at the nastier lyrics on “Ten$ion,” and Ninja, Yo-Landi and their producer, a beats master named DJ Hi-Tek, opted to distribute the album on their own. They figure their fans will find them anyway. Back at the party, somebody turned on the album’s first single. Ninja leapt out of the beanbag chair, stuck a cheese curl into one nostril and started strobing the living-room lights. Neighbors streamed in to dance: black children, colored teenagers, even a trio of elderly whites clutching glasses of wine.

The song, whose title is too dirty to publish, was getting everybody moving. In fact, the trio of old folks seemed to enjoy the track the most. They slapped one another’s bottoms and acted out the lyrics by pumping their middle fingers in the air. One woman caught my eye and shrugged. “I love this, and I’m nearly 60!” she shouted. “It brings everything alive.”

Bob-Dubery

Jack Flash Jr wrote: It was the closest thing to a fight I saw on New Year’s Eve. The tough-guy thing turned out to be something of a bluff. Ninja didn’t “get really drunk wif some homies,” because he doesn’t drink. Settling into a beanbag chair after the firecracker battle, he asked me gently whether driving through crime-ridden Johannesburg had been scary and offered me a cup of tea.

Ah! That explains a few things.