Show Preview: Die Antwoord Just Don’t Give a Fok
Die Antwoord Live @ Showbox Sodo
February 20, 2012
By Adam Drew
Die Antwoord (the answer) are a crass south Afikani group that’s rippin’ new holes in style with a “just don’t give a fok attitude.”
At first glance (as I watched “Enter the Ninja” from their first album $O$) I was both surprised and weirded out. It was like nothing I’d seen before, but yet it was familiar. Imagine if the United States and Europe took all the music we have been creating for the past thirty years, bundled it up, and recycled it through the minds of some ghetto b-boys and b-girls from Cape Town.
As well as having a great stage presence, a terrific sense of humor, and more personality than they know what to do with, Die Antwoord are more creative than most bands out of America in the last decade. We have become a little stagnant in this country. We put so many rules on what can and can’t be that we strangled all the life out of the creative process.
Not so with this group. MCs NINJA and Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ HI-TEK mix it up any way they feel like. There are bits of old school electronic alongside American hip-hop, drum and bass and trance. You’ve truly never heard anything like this before.
Die Antwoord play the Showbox SODO in Seattle on February 20 with KEXP’s DJ Kid Hops.