A Physical Fraction

Heres a befokte article on die Antwoord by Mungo Adonis who really knows the streets around Cape Town and asks the people on the streets how they think and feel about Die Antwoord. Cause even though the interweb hype is going very fast worldwide, there are still lots and lots of people in South Africa who haven't heard of the band at all and think that their lyrics and image is not really fair compared to the true african culture or the living in the Cape Flats and dealing drugs on the corners.



The people that are heard in this article are not straight Die Antwoord fans, it's interesting to hear their point of view on Die Antwoord though. On the other hand, it's just another point of view while Die Antwoord also have a great bunch of fans in the South of Africa. To keep it clean and open, here the opinion from the other side...Let us know what your opinion is.



Die Vraag
Monday / March 15th / 2010 by Mungo Adonis

Die Antwoord have just signed a major record deal with Interscope. They’re shooting music videos with Neill Blomkamp and having lunch with David Lynch. But back in the Cape Flats, people still don’t know who they are.



I don’t like Die Antwoord. I’ve bought into Waddy’s other incarnations before and I’m running low on indulgence this time around. Mildly ironic, as it’s his current project that’s threatening to garner the success that he’s been dodging for decades.

The interweb is eating him and his Zef - rap up whole. I just wonder when it will get full and need to kots. Because Die Antwoord is like a droe snoek pizza delivered by Eminem: cheesy, fishy, aggressive, bound to make you ill and a fundamentally bad idea.



I wouldn’t mind having him appropriate another culture if it was done in a less cynical way. See, what’s novel and funny to white people smells like plastic and opportunism to coloured people.

For my part, I know the Flats. I grew up with the people that Die Antwoord is pastiching. They’re my uncles and friends and teachers and the girls that I hit on and the guys who used to chase me around on Guy Fawkes Day and the gangsters on the corners that my mother warned me about and the aunties reading The Voice on the train and the shopkeepers who let me buy on credit because they knew my grandfather and the brasse that I used to go half on a gatsby with at school but are vuil tikkoppe now. They are not Die Antwoord. No question.



Waddy has always ninja - stepped the razor line between irony and sincerity, with many people believing that his varying personas were for real. This makes Ninja’s assertion that he is an embodiment of South African culture dangerous, particularly in the face of global attention. An entire people’s representation hangs on what is at best performance art and at worst commercial exploitation.

So while The Guardian, Pitchfork Media and uh… Katy Perry and Fred Durst are smaaking Die Antwoord, what about the people whose culture they are appropriating?

I take my laptop around to Grassy Park and played some songs from www.dieantwoord.com for my grandmother. “Hoekom moet hy so die heel tyd vloek (Why does he have to swear all the time) ?” my grandmother wants to know. Me too, for that matter. Now, this is the woman who routinely referred to my German girlfriend as “plank-poes”. So she’s not afraid of a bit of profanity. But Die Antwoord’s swearing is cynical and not very clever. It’s not even gratuitous: it’s calculated to manufacture edginess and the illusion of street-cred.

“Huh - uh. Ek lyk die gladtie (Nope. I don’t like this at all) ,” Mama says. “Wat se hy? Huh - uh. Vat die kak weg! (What’s he saying? Nope. Take this kak away) ”

I head around the corner to Bronwyn’s house. She was my Matric year girlfriend but we still chat regularly on Facebook. She still lives with her folks and her father still hates me and her room still reminds me of gangly teenage sex.



“I can’t actually hear what he’s saying,” she says after listening to ‘Enter the Ninja’. “Um… He raps very fast, hey. Umm… What’s Zef? And why’s she singing about his production?”

Things get a bit awkward during ‘Beat Boy’s graphic porno - rap. Memories, I suppose (Ed - lol).

Bronwyn is not stoked about his accent either. To our ears it’s as authentic as Matt Damon’s South African accent is in Invictus. Americans might not notice the discrepancy, but the misplaced flat / sharp mispronunciations ring loudly in our ears.



Next, I go to visit my cousin in Heideveld. His mother hugs me, shoves a polony and cheese sandwich at me and says that Rashied is in his room. Aunty Tiefa loves her son but isn’t quite able to acknowledge that he is a full time drug dealer and low - ranking gang member. He’s sitting on his bed listening to his beloved Tupac’s Hit ‘Em Up. I worry about my laptop when I see that he’s got a scary looking friend there too who remains unintroduced. I play ‘Wie Maak Die Jol Vol’, ‘Wat Pomp’ and ‘Dagga Puff’ for them.



“Bwwwhahahhaaaahhaaa,” they laugh during ‘Wie Maak Die Jol Vol’ and ‘Wat Pomp’. “Befok ja!”It seems that they dig the party stuff. They’re less enthused about ‘Dagga Puff’ and its intro supposedly detailing a dagga deal followed by music-box beats and kiddie rhymes. “It werk ‘ie ‘n fok soe nie (it doesn’t go like that at all) ,” says Rashied. Die ou het nooit gemurt ‘ie, ‘n mens kan soema hoor (this guy has never dealt before, you can easily hear).”

I show them the pics and they laugh more. “Ninja, huh?”, says Rashied’s friend. “Ek sal hom in sy poes in skop. Ouens innie mang sallie sy koukie tchappies grand ‘ie (I’ll fuck him up. Guys in prison won’t dig his magic - marker tattoos).”

Coloured people are history’s middlemen – nie te wit ‘ie, nie te swart ‘ie, net reg. It must sound a bit rich to be defending Cape Flat’s culture from appropriation when the entire race springs from interracial banging and slave sex.

But it’s the manner in which Die Anwtoord goes about their business. The whole affair feels aggressive, high - concept and insincere. There’s nothing wrong with Ninja embracing his inner coloured and getting down at Galaxy with his darker-skinned brethren. He just shouldn’t shout that he is all of us. If he continues doing this it’s quite likely that one of Rashied’s friends will find him and kick him in his poes.

by Mungo Adonis

source: http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/die-vraag-questions-for-die-antwoord/

What's you opinion on the Zef Rave Rap phenomenon? Heres some comments left behind on the site:

Is it a crime that Ninja has a history as a performer? Does it matter that tjip rolls might not be on the menu everyday and that someone saw one of them eating an Italian tomato at the Gardens Center? This is the kind of micro kak that locals poison each other and their efforts with. For now let’s all laugh, and bask in their new found media success as our “yes we can” moment for South African performers. Because, until deals are made and money is paid, until the album $0$ is on iTunes to purchase and units are sold, not just stolen, for now, pop culture history is the only currency that’s been traded. (mahala!)

Give Die Antwoord a chance! And lets hope that they’ll be one of many cultural phenomenons hailing from South Africa. At least its not something born out of a commercial bullshitty show with a SMS - vote on American Idol.

Long live Die Antwoord!