The Fuss about Die Antwoord's "Evil Boy"

posted in: Features • Urban

Die Antwoord’s lowbrow pastiche called zef has given umbrage to their community and international fans with the [NSFW] video for Evil Boy. Zef is South Africa’s counterpart to the working class aesthetic of America’s ghetto fabulousness popularized by some genres of rap. The contrast comes in the way zef recycles older cultural and style references like Die Antwoord’s usage of ˜90s house beats instead of the Black American habit to musically innovate and move on to the next thing. However, the lusty sum of David Lynch, street rap and dance music is providing Die Antwoord with the proper sonic bed for their culturally dissonant eyeball-to-eyeball lyrics. In the case of Evil Boy Philadelphia producer Diplo twerked a Casio meets 808 drum machine stripper pole beat to dialogue with guest rapper Wanga’s punchy protest against the Xhosa tradition of male circumcision in the bush.

A mélange of phalluses, Yo-Landi’s white toy rat coat, blonde wigged Black girls, wooden sculpture and dark lighting mock the ritual while flexing the gaudiness of cheap shiny populism. Ninja is the group’s main focal point and he shared in a recent interview that Wanga was willing to be an outcast in his homeland rather than be a part of the surgical risk that killed 60 boys this year. Imbalu is the process to manhood the Xhosa people of South Africa believe a boy must undergo or face perpetual childhood, ostracism, disease and acute adversity. Refusal of the ritual will make the procedure a forced one. The typical reading of his statement to only offer his member to women as homophobic is actually his critique of Ugandan masculinity that shuns gays but demands a singular intimacy that can only come from one man circumcising another.

When the band debuted earlier in the year online networks were buzzing over questions of their authenticity but gangsta rap’s dubious players made that inquiry irrelevant years ago. Die Antwoord is sincere about ruffling the status quo; Wanga purposely uses the Xhosa’s most profane word of insult at the beginning of the song to communicate his rhythmic polemic. Umnqunduwakho [pronounced moon-dwako] is the Xhosa equivalent to reducing someone’s existence to the opening of their anus. The success of mainstream rap’s cast of identity shifters like Rick Ross and Die Antwoord’s lack of a straight narrative has obscured Evil Boy’s old school motive of truly speaking from the societal perimeter.

Die Antwoord’s album $0$ is in stores now.

[NSFW] Die Antwoord “Evil Boy”

By Tamara Harris

Tamara Harris is a music blogger who has published past work in Blues and Soul, Floss, Grip, AOL City and The Metro Times.