Die Antwoord – Fatty Boom Boom: The Making Of

Every bit as good as the original vid. Helps to address some of the issues around the "blackface disrespects black culture" claims conjured up by the original music video, without going out of its way to respond to them.

Sure, Die Antwoord are fetishising their African roots, which is a form of disrespect. But they may be satirising the very fetishing they – and many African visitors – are guilty of.

It's always a pleasure seeing an artist's method, and here we get a glimpse of Ninja's systematic creativity at work on what might seem a piece of puerile satire. But there's deeper levels at work, my blaer.

Die Antwoord namecheck the stars of the vid and credit Roger Ballen for the influence and all. (Check out some of Mr Ballen's impressive body of work over here, and you might start to see how he's influenced the group.) For all the zefness and the cultural appropriation, this is some pretty evolved art, but not too consciously so.



...and then obviously the actual video.

Die Antwoord – Fatty Boom Boom

"Jesus, ou. Chill net 'n bietjie fokken uit!" Two weeks after the Mail & Guardian's academically constipated query in a recent editorial, "Are Die Antwoord blackface", the zep-rave crew release a fresh, next-level video upon the interwebs. In blackface. And whiteface.

Whatever they stand for is not too simple to explain, but what they do is provocative and thought-provoking. We suppose that makes them "artists", that most over-used term in modern culture.

There's so much satire at work here, it's almost impossible to isolate where Die Antwoord are saying one thing, and where they're saying exactly the opposite. Over-analysis will kill the energy of a thing. So we're going to just say, "Lekker tune. Kief video".

Die Antwoord trailer – Fatty Boom Boom

Nice to see Anties working with some credible comics on this. We've have lots of drinks with Dave Kibuuka. That's him in the shorts. Except Dave wasn't drinking that time, so he just watched us get totally smashed while talking about ourselves. He probably thinks we're a bit of a doos. Anyway here's the trailer. Looks like K-Pop ;-).