Jack-Flash-Jr
For kicks, Canadian live review:
South Africa’s Die Antwoord: rowdy rappers but sweet, too
j.d. considine
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 2:15PM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 2:24PM EST
South Africa’s Die Antwoord is reputedly the most controversial group in rap at the moment, a statement that speaks volumes about how much the genre has mellowed since the days of N.W.A. The trio brought its act to Toronto on Tuesday, playing a sweaty, sold-out show that leavened its attitude with a surprising amount of uplift.
They bad
Die Antwoord released their latest album, Ten$ion, a week ago, after having been dropped by Interscope records for insisting that the first single be a tune whose title is an Afrikaans obscenity.
Judging from the shout-alongs, the young, heavily male crowd at the Phoenix – a group whose taste tended more to metal T-shirts and the occasional mohawk than hip-hop togs – had already committed much of the album to memory. Whether this cheered the group is hard to say, as tattooed front man Ninja wore a perpetual scowl through the performance, while the muscular DJ Hi-Tek hid his expression behind a vaguely simian mask.
Brought to you by the letter ‘F’
Whether in English or Afrikaans, the members of Die Antwoord love to swear. Ninja and his pixie-voiced sidekick, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, toss the F-word around as casually as teenage girls say “like,” while DJ Hi-Tek, who started the show with DJ Hi-Tek Rulez, articulated his toughness through an unquotable menu of the various ways in which he (or his beats) would violate the listener.
Still, it was hard to get upset by the profanity. Some of it was mere peacock strutting, tough talk for the sake of seeming macho, but mostly it was used for rhythmic emphasis, to lend the raps a verbal kick equivalent to Hi-Tek’s bass-heavy grooves.
Drop that bass
Rap has emphasized the bowel-vibrating power of deep bass since Afrika Bambaataa discovered the Roland 808 drum machine in the early 1980s. Die Antwoord’s sound is similarly bass-heavy, but the beats tend to be faster and less funky than most rap, which puts the group’s sound closer to techno or dubstep than to mainstream hip hop.
At times, as during Baby’s on Fire, Ninja and Yo-Landi underscore the similarity to techno by offering club-style vocal melodies; elsewhere, as on the drum-driven Fatty Boom Boom, they emphasize the rhythmic momentum of the track with rapid-fire rhymes and machine-gun delivery that, even when it obscured the words, increased the music’s impact.
Sexy and they know it
As their F-nocentric lyrics reflect, Die Antwoord like to rap about sex. Ninja – who stripped down to his Dark Side of the Moon silk boxers for the last few numbers – does so in classic hip-hop style, equating virility not only with sexual prowess but also with general alpha male-ness.
Vi$$er, by contrast, treated sexiness as currency, a dialectic she offered both as criticism, on the booty-wagging Rich Bitch, and celebration, as with the breathlessly horny I Fink U Freaky. But where Ninja and Hi-Tek spent most of the set shirtless, Yo-Landi sported her hot-pants and cropped top only when lyrically appropriate; by the show’s end, she was sporting a modest, dress-sized T.
Maybe not so bad
Die Antwoord closed the show with Never Le Nkemise, Pt. 2, which found Ninja insisting, “We make our own rules. We answer to no one. We keep it gangsta.”
If so, they’re pretty sweet for gangstas. When a scuffle broke out during Wat Kyk Jy?, Ninja asked if everyone was all right, then added, un-ironically, “You guys kiss and say, ‘I’m sorry.’” And when Yo-Landi bade the crowd farewell by chirping, “Toronto – be happy!” it didn’t undercut the tough-talk so much as remind us that this was, after all, entertainment. And given the quality of the performance, it would be safe to say that most of the crowd did, in fact, leave happy.
Riaan-Combrink
I attended a braai with two other couples last weekend. Really cool, intelligent people, mature, good jobs - the whole nine yards. Was astonished that they spend one hour of the evening playing Die Antwoord videos. The one guy is in the film industry, the other's an accountant. All present were English speaking. So there's defintely something happening with this band, who seem to have a diverse market.
chris77
I don't like them, but then I seldom like "new" music anyways. Give me a proper instrument based act, some tunes I can whistle and lyrics I can sing to myself in the car and I am happy. But people differ in their tastes and preferences.
When I drive past the site of a big accident I will slow down a bit to get past safely, wave thank you at the traffic cop as I pass him and then drive on, maybe glancing back in the mirrors once or twice and hoping everybody came out of it safely. Other folks will flock around the scene, eager to get a glimpse of the wreckage and paramedics at work - first prize being a corpse or some body parts strewn across the road. Different strokes for different folks.
epictring
deefstes wrote
epictring wrote
That video is.. original at least.
You say that as if it is something to be admired? How difficult can it be to come up with something "original"? Let's try, shall we?
Scene opens where an obese version of Queen Elizabeth reclines in a bath filled with avocado pulp. Alongside the bath there's a hobo sitting on a rocking horse touching himself as inappropriately as your video distribution channel will allow. Scene cuts to a bright white room that's completely empty except for a smartly dressed businessman doubled over a potplant and vomiting into it. Camera zooms in to reveal that the plant is in fact a baby that is burried up to the neck. All the while, play some heavy beats over this and suitably vulgar rap.
There, "original" enough for you?
Dude, seriously? Lets just chill.
I wasn't asking for a 101 on originality. I'm not favoring Die Antwoord at all. But you can't deny they have been getting a lot of publicity for their inappropriate videos (not that I favor it). "Original" in the sense that it's not just another live performance video.
I think it was last year (maybe 2010) they won the best Myspace music video award in the world, competing against other similar acts such as Lady Gaga. This was for they're first "hit" song.
Again, I don't like they're music, I don't like they're style. I'm just saying they are intentionally being so weird, because it's what made them successful. Not that I'm gonna go follow they're methods, just pointing it out. They are a lot smarter than most people think.
