What Die Antwoord always wanted was to play with the spectacular to get people’s attention. As one does as an artist, I assume. In their new video, they get official help from Roger Ballen. Die Antwoord play the game well; whether they play it fair is open for interpretation.
We promised ourselves we won’t get drawn into this. This is the week in which Cape Town viral rappers Die Antwoord released the music video for their new single “Fok julle Naaiers.” The music video contains some Die Antwoord staples (spiders and scorpions come out of rapper Ninja’s mouth while he throws around the word Nigger, […]
The South African group Die Antwoord has a new album coming out next week with a major American music label. You can’t but admire their hustle. Yesterday they debuted a new video for which they recruited a young black rapper called “Wanga,” allegedly a street kid they’ve known for years–flanked by black dancers in blond wigs–who rails against people coming to circumcise him and manages to offend gay people in the process.
First world hipster bloggers and music websites (with foreign correspondents’ not far behind) are besides themselves about South African performers, Die Antwoord. Linking to them. Talking about their style. Good for them and Die Antwoord. But even boosters for the Die Antwoord, like Richard Poplak,have to concede this: “… what their lyrics mean — or what they stand for precisely — no one in Brooklyn or Paris or São Paulo can say.” Which is why I like this piece of of writing, below, by Cape Town writer Rustum Kozain, about Die Antwoord’s music and style. While I wouldn’t say that what Die Antwoord does is necessarily blackface, I think some of its problematic aspects need to be discussed.
No, Somali-Canadian rapper/crooner K’Naan’s “God, Country or the Girl” did not make my list of best albums of 2012. And his post-facto denouncement of its contents in an op-ed in The New York Times (!) has nothing to do with it. With the exception of a cut with Nas (“Nothing to Lose“), K’Naan’s latest is, however, […]
2012 is rapidly coming to a close, which means it’s time to assemble some of our favorite music videos from the past year. Indeed it’s no easy task to construct a video in which the moving picture finds a harmonious companion in the sonic beat. Just as daunting can be choosing, among the hundreds of […]
Praise be to W magazine for its vanguardism! They have finally and single-handedly put the rest of the world on to how hip, cosmopolitan, and modern the city of Johannesburg truly is! At long last someone has acknowledged the existence of a “multiracial creative class utopia” in downtown Johannesburg. The city is even home to […]
Spot the references in this music video by Ollie Nhlabatsi for South African duo Spaza$hop Boyz. (We can think of some.)
No we’re not on a mini-Spoek Mathambo marathon today. Intrigued by Spoek’s remix of Seun Kuti and the trailer for his new album, we googled Spoek anew and stumbled upon this video of a 2011 presentation Spoek gave at TedxSoweto (it was only uploaded onto Youtube at the end of last month). What I find useful […]
I read The Financial Times because they cover the news that is essential to capital and those who rule us. But most of time I just don’t get their op-ed page.
