No Majesty Music Profiles takes a look at artists’ careers from start to present, with the aim of documenting their impact on music culture.
Hailing from Cape Town in South Africa, Die Antwoord are artists Watkin Tudor Jones and Anri du Toit, better known as Ninja and Yolandi Visser. Before fame – even before assuming their musical roles – they both started their careers performing satirical songs, such as the ones they released under the band name MaxNormal back in 2001. A quick rise to fame saw them supporting Faithless at a concert in Cape Town in the same year.
But it wasn’t to be, and the band split up shortly after. Some of MaxNormal went on to start a group named Chromoscience while Jones and Toit created another group known as The Constructus Corporation. Their second project together was just as short-lived, and they were both back performing under the name MaxNormal.TV by 2005 (The added . TV was to differentiate between the two phases of the group).
In early 2008 the duo formed a new group, Die Antwoord (Their name is Afrikaans for ‘The Answer’). It is quite difficult to bottle up the group’s explicit music and throw it into a certain category, and that is because a lot of it is experimental. What some might call Rap/Rave, others would call alternative hip/hop or innovative dance. Either way, I like it. Admittedly I hadn’t even I personally enjoyed it, though I admittedly hadn’t heard of the South African band until around about their third album, but having gone backwards and listened to their older stuff I quickly realized what a great band they are.
$O$ was their first album. It was released way back in 2010, and what a great album strong debut it was. The song ‘Enter the Ninja’ is my personal favourite from the album and reached a reasonable chart position of 37 in the UK (Their highest chart position here to date). While their songs weren’t getting massive chart success, they were gaining millions of fans via YouTube and with the bands gigs. They performed Coachella in April 2010 and signed up to an arm of Interscope Records shortly after.
After a fall out with Interscope over creative differences, the band then set up their own label, (Zef Recordz) and soon after released their second album Ten$ion. The album is full of banging tunes including ‘I Fink U Freeky’, ‘Baby’s on Fire’ and ‘Fatty Boom Boom’. These singles pushed Die Antwoord globally and they were soon appearing in adverts and on American talk shows.
Their third album Donker Mag was released in 2014 and contains the brilliant hit ‘Cookie Thumper!’. The video for the song went viral and has since gained over 32 million views on YouTube. It was also around this time that the bands main members (Ninja and Yolandi Visser) started shooting the film Chappie. Director and writer Neill Blomkamp cast them as larger than life gangsters alongside a stellar cast including Sharlto Copley, Hugh Jackman, Dev Patel and Sigourney Weaver. The film (released in 2015) grossed over $100 million dollars and helped shoot Ninja and Yolandi (and their music) onto a global scale.
The band released two albums in 2016. The first (SUCK ON THIS) was largely experimental and contained a lot of remixes. The second (Mount Ninja and da Nice Time Kid) in my opinion is the pinnacle of their career. Songs “We Have Candy” and “Wings on my Penis” are hilarious and catchy. While songs “Alien” and “Banana Brain” are simply brilliant.
Originally scheduled for release in September 2017, fans are now awaiting the release of ‘27’, which is believed to be the Die Antwoord’s last album before they will disband. The album had originally been titled The Book of Zef, a nod to Zef – the South African counterculture movement that has dominated their style since their beginnings.
The band announced on Twitter that 10 of the 27 songs from ‘27’ will be released as the score to a feature film they are working on, and the other 17 would be ‘hidden’ in various places including a soon to be released limited edition vinyl.
