Photo by Sean Metalerkamp

In a September 2008 interview, South African hip-hop changeling Waddy Jones-- performing with the conceptual act Max Normal at the time-- made a prediction about an upcoming rap project he was concocting. "Die Antwoord will be presented to the world as a wild and savage rap crew from the deep, dark, depths of Africa," he said. "Die Antwoord rap crew is going to perform live before the screening of Die Antwoord feature film at the Cannes Film Festival in the overseas."

And while Jones' latest identity-skewing art project has yet to get a nod from Cannes, these Capetown art punks are a hell of a lot closer to international acclaim than anyone could have expected a couple of years ago. And it's all happened in little more than a week.

On the surface, Die Antwoord are simply the latest in a never-ending line of "did ya see that?!" blog-hopping music memes. Made up of lead MC Ninja (Jones), singer-rapper-sexpot Yo-Landi Vi$$er, linebacker-sized mute DJ Hi-Tek, and progerian survivor and artist Leon Bartha, the group made their live debut a year ago. But it wasn't until Boing Boing posted their music video for "Enter the Ninja" and a quasi-documentary called "Zef Side" on February 1 of this year that they shot ahead of acts like Animal Collective, Pavement, and Wilco on Google Trends. Soon after, Fred Durst and Katy Perry were typing their praises on Twitter.

"Enter the Ninja"

"Zef Side" (featuring a portion of "Beat Boy")

The videos are funny-- an especially memorable shot in "Zef Side" shows a slow-motion close up of Ninja's swinging balls underneath Dark Side of the Moon boxers-- but there is also a post-modern Ali G factor. Considering the mix of absurdity, genuine talent, and impressive production values, you can't help but think "are these guys for real?" And it's that curiosity that made me temporarily obsessed with Die Antwoord on first glance; I spent a solid hour following links and browsing message boards like Hipinion for clues. (So far, requests for an interview with the band have yet to produce results.) In the middle of "Enter the Ninja", Jones puffs his chest and says, "This is like the coolest song I heard in my whole life." The video's rush of extreme otherness is so intoxicating that-- for just a split second-- you almost agree with him.

"Die Antwoord" is Afrikaans for "The Answer." The act may seem like a quick-hit success, but Jones has been rapping under different aliases and styles since the mid-90s. And the crew's playful and raunchy "Zef" (South African slang for "redneck" or "common") ethos has an online homebase called Wat Kyk Jy? (which means "what are you looking at?"-- think DeNiro in Taxi Driver) that's been around for a decade. The site features an insular vernacular dictionary ("windpomp-- man with a small penis") along with a logo featuring drink-of-choice (and sometime scene sponsor) Jägermeister, a dildo, and what looks like a woman with blue testicles hanging down from her mini-skirt. It's like crunk via Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker" video.

A South African commenter on The Guardian's website broke down some zef signifiers: "clapped-out Ford Cortinas with fur on the dashboard, tight mom jeans pulled up too high, synth-heavy ringtone rave, mullets." Which sorta reminds me of that other fantastically outrageous slice of pop zeitgeist called "Jersey Shore". But Die Antwoord are a lot brighter than that cast of boardwalk louts. For one thing, their rave-inspired forthcoming debut LP, dubbed $O$ and currently streaming at their site, is not only listenable but utterly strident in its originality. The heavy use of Afrikaans and local slang automatically makes it stand out, but the accomplished, synth-heavy beats, and fully formed personalities of Ninja and Yo-Landi give Die Antwoord the potential to rise above the web's YouTube hype cycle. So we have an absolutely ridiculous-looking and sounding group of rappers who make seriously entertaining songs with titles like "Jou Ma se Poes in 'n Fishpaste Jar", which means "Your Mother's Cunt in a Fishpaste Jar" (yes, there's a corresponding NSFW picture). Eminem (circa 2000) would be proud.

Die Antwoord are ripping through the "interwebs"-- as they like to call it-- at a time when concrete notions of authenticity and identity are crumbling at an increasing rate. Echoing the sentiments of a generation that's raked in the benefits of alter egos from Sacha Baron Cohen's multiple guises to Beyoncé's Sasha Fierce onstage persona, Videogum recently ran with the headline, "Die Antwoord Is 'Fake,' And So What?" Talking about his personal mindset to South Africa's Times recently, Jones/Ninja said, "I'm just engaging my inner zef, which everybody has. It's not a persona, it's an extension of myself, an exaggerated version of myself."

In the online age, where many people put forth exaggerated versions of themselves on the internet everyday by-way-of blogs and Twitter, Jones's method seems particularly au courant. In the same piece, he talked about the future of Die Antwoord: "Live Nation, the biggest events company in the world, wants to make a deal with us. There's an international bidding war going on at the moment over who's going to represent us. EMI Worldwide and Interscope Universal are bidding for my soul." Exaggeration? Maybe not.