“That was never something I really wanted to do - at least in that movie.”īut with the help of their high-powered agents at William Morris Endeavor, Die Antwoord could release its own movie - a feature film detailing the band’s creation called “The Answer” - as soon as next year. Or they wanted to base the character on me,” Vi$$er said. (The group’s mysterious 19-year-old DJ Hi-Tek, who is responsible for creating the group’s synth- and bass-heavy musical undergirdle, seldom travels and never does interviews.) Director David Fincher ( “The Social Network”) tried to enlist Vi$$er to portray one of Hollywood’s most hotly contested female characters of the past decade, Lisbeth Salander, in his reboot of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” franchise, despite Vi$$er’s near-total absence of acting background. To wit: Vi$$er and Ninja have downed cappuccinos at David Lynch’s Hollywood home, discussed film projects with “District 9" helmer (and fellow South African) Neill Blomkamp and plan to shoot a short film with “Gummo” writer-director Harmony Korine next month in Nashville. “They’re banging down the door with a sledgehammer.” “Hollywood’s not knocking on our door,” said Ninja. The group’s next, seemingly inevitable step: movie stardom. The two-minute “Zef Side” clip, directed by photographer-commercial director Sean Metelerkamp, was selected to be shown at New York’s Guggenheim Museum last week as part of a global video art competition titled “YouTube Play.” Meanwhile, Die Antwoord’s controversial video for “Evil Boy” - which features talking breasts, an explicit rap verse about male circumcision and an overabundance of penile imagery - was pulled from YouTube this month. 109 on the national album chart and cracking the United Kingdom top 10 with the single “Evil Boy.”Īnd recent weeks have seen the group’s video output both lionized and censored. 12, after nearly a year of Die Antwoord’s incessant touring, performing at packed shows and festivals across North America, Europe and Japan, its debut album, "$O$" finally reached retail, landing at No. On the strength of Die Antwoord’s viral popularity, the group triggered a bidding war among five major labels and signed a five-album deal with Cherrytree/Interscope Records in May. We laugh ourselves to sleep every night.”įrowning, his face a grave rictus of sober intent, he added: “Conceptual art, I don’t even know what that is.”įor now, neither fans, art lovers nor the machers controlling record label purse strings seem to care. Seated at a Mid-City hotel restaurant, the greyhound-thin, heavily tattooed lead rapper, Ninja (Watkin “Waddy” Tudor Jones), scoffed with undisguised scorn: “Yes, it’s a joke. But given the bandmates’ well-documented pre-Die Antwoord past - as members of the jokey “corporate” rap group MaxNormal.TV and the experimental music collective the Constructus Corporation - what its core constituency of hipsters and bloggers really want to know: Is Die Antwoord punking the world à la Ali G? Or worse, is it conceptual art? The group is poised to become the biggest international rap cross-over since Falco in the 1980s. Chalk up the head-scratching to the Cape Town trio’s singular synthesis of throw-away cultural effluvia: its bawdy sex rhymes and naked celebration of a uniquely South African white trashiness called “Zef,” its employ of imagery equally inspired by children and the criminally insane as well as the sense of cultivated mystery that has shrouded Die Antwoord for the last nine months.