My interview was originally postponed due to an ominously vague explanation: "Ninja's being She closes her eyes and shakes her head, as though his reaction was too horrific for words. None the less we venture, with some trepidation, up a dark staircase to meet them.
Backstage, in a brightly lit room, Ninja is holding court while eating pitta bread and hummus. He clasps both my hands and does a little bow and a series of ingratiating head tilts, an odd and endearing courtly dance that's repeated when we say goodbye.
Complimentary peanuts may soon lose their thrill, but for now, you can't really blame them for getting excited. Die Antwoord are not the first hip-hop group to inject humour into what they do. They are, however, the first rap-rave group from South Africa to become a global phenomenon, delivering a slap in the face to anyone moaning about the homogenisation of culture or the pervasiveness of Anglo-American pop music. When I meet them the following week in London at their record label — they're newly signed to Polydor — they're hunched inside their own-brand tracksuits looking morose.
Then Ninja starts expounding on the meaning of "zef" and he comes alive. The zef swearing, for me, is so fucking extreme that it's like cartoon language — this weird, like, freak mode fungus style. Because it's not just a language, it's Zef is, you're poor but you're fancy.
You're poor but you're sexy, you've got style. Ninja — or rather Watkin — has long been involved in hip-hop groups "I've been fucking around with lots of, like, conceptual stuff for a while" , but the thinking behind Die Antwoord, as the year-old explains, "was kinda throw away the conceptual stuff and just let it be South Africa and South African style. Yolandi sort of pushed me because it was right there and sometimes you can't see what's right in front of your face".
Yolandi, whose age remains a secret, "was doing nothing" before Die Antwoord except, as Ninja adds with some pride, "causing trouble, going to rehab and getting expelled". Ninja's engaged in an anecdote about their beef with one of the producer Diplo's DJs when he lets slip that he has a daughter.
He's Die Antwoord's rock, and Yolandi is the spontaneous nymph. He is strong, and she is fierce. He is calculated, while she is unbridled. It's a dynamic so key to Die Antwoord's majesty, but it almost destroyed them. That moment outside the store, the two of them crying in each other's arms, it sparked a romance deep and rough as the sea.
Imagine falling in love with someone, creating a band, having a baby, and hitting the road, all the while launching toward some kind of underground superstardom. The inevitable moment came when they had to choose love or the band. Only one could survive. The choice was easy. Aphex Twin Confirmed for First U. Performance in 8 Years. But now, it definitely feels like we've passed that test, and we're ready for the final one.
It feels like fucking showtime. There's five lanes on the highway, and we stared off at lane one, lane two, lane three. We're in lane four now, and this is shit turbo-boosted, fucking nitrous, fucking everything's tricked the fuck out in this illegal fucking Zef-mobile, and we're about to drop a gear and go waaaaah, just switch lanes.
We're in the fifth lane, that fast lane, it doesn't have a speed limit, and that's what we're about to go into. Muggs hooked the group up with a weed deal, and fans can look forward to Zef-brand strains, vapes, and THC candies.
With the album officially out, the band readies for a North American tour, all the while holding down at Muggs' studio, writing the fifth and penultimate chapter in a never-ending story. Chapter four was hard, but it's finally over. Die Antwoord climbed, jumped, and there's nothing left but to fly. I'm singing it every day, smiling like a retard driving down the street on the way to the studio … I'm fucking excited, like aahhh, but I'm also digging the day to day shit, you know?
Patience, like the stalker. Search term. Billboard Pro Subscribe Sign In. Top Artists. Top Charts. Hot Songs.
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