Trying to describe seeing South African rap-ravers Die Antwoord in concert is like trying to describe color to a blind person: It’s near impossible.
To call the group’s performance a concert is to undersell it. It was more of a bizarre journey through an alternate universe, in which tiny girls in baby-blue booty shorts rap about drawing pentagrams with lipstick and communing with sexy ghosts.
With Die Antwoord, you have to understand that they’re in on the joke. The band is a construct, a combination of each member’s “Zef” side, mixed with what the group’s two members Ninja and Yolandi Visser deem their “next-level beats.”
For those not in the know, “Zef” is a term used to describe low-class South Africans who are considered common, trashy or culturally clueless. Die Antwoord has taken this word as their own, adopting it as their personal philosophy.
The man behind Ninja is Watkins Tudor-Jones, founder and frontman of Die Antwoord. His alternate persona is crude, rude and hypersexual — totally evident in his rap lyrics.
Topics vary from bloody boobs to “Eye of the Tiger” and just about everything in between. Yolandi Visser, or Yo-Landi Vi$$er, is the sole female in the group, but she’s just as dangerous; what she lacks in her pint-sized height she makes up for in energy and inexplicable sex appeal.
The raw of Die Antwoord lies in the absolutely defiant attitude of the band. Maybe Yo-Landi wants to wear contacts that make her look like an alien — so what? They’re Die Antwoord and they’re international superstars, at least in their own mind.
Their overall popularity aside, local D.C. fans couldn’t get enough of the South African group.
The band played a ridiculously short one-hour set, leaving the crowd begging for more.
The night ended on a lower note, with many complaining that they felt shortchanged, especially because the opening act played for longer than the featured performers. After waiting three hours to see them, many people were justifiably angry.
The opener, DJ Nacey, played for an hour and a half, which felt like an eternity when Die Antwoord was right around the corner.
However, Nacey proved to be a talented, inventive DJ that justifiably earned his own full performance. The Baltimore native has recently garnered some Internet buzz for his remixes of M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” and “Steppin’ Up.” Watch out for him in the near future.
Once Die Antwoord took the stage, a seismic shift took over the crowd. The very foundation of the 9:30 club shook with the bass that was pumping out of associated band member DJ Hi-Tek’s laptop. People in the balcony were dancing and jumping just as much as the people on the floor.
When the band played well-known songs like “Beat Boy” and “Enter the Ninja”, the screaming drowned out the music. Even cuts off their new album “Ten$ion” had almost everyone singing along.
Ninja took a literal leap of faith into the moshing crowd several times over the hour-long set, completed by the look of terror on his face when certain crowd members got a little too far into his famous Pink Floyd boxers.
The thrashing concert-goers could not have been less concerned with things like safety. The “Zeflings,” Die Antwoord’s hardcore fans, struggled all night to climb the metal barricades that prevented them from reaching the band.
Over the course of the night, the number club security guards posted in front of the stage increased from two to six. This seemed to be a source of pride for the band.
Overall, there was no way the crowd could stay mad at Die Antwoord for long.
“Next-level” is just about the highest Zef praise you can get, and these guys absolutely earned the title.
No one, when faced with the opportunity to enter this insane alternate world that Die Antwoord creates, should ever pass it up.
thescene@theeagleonline.com
