5 FACETS OF CAPETOWN ELECTRORAP

South Africa’s Die Antwoord is where hip-hop meets EDM and performance art. Shawn Conner lays it all out.

1. Full moons and tattoos

Since emerging from Cape Town in 2008, Die Antwoord — rappers Ninja and Yolandi Visser and collaborator DJ HiTek (now known simply as “God”) — have earned a reputation as one of the wildest live acts in the world. Expect dancers, jumpsuits, nudity (Ninja’s audience-mooning, mostly) and scary eyes (courtesy Visser’s black contact lenses).

2. Zef

If it wasn’t for Die Antwoord (“The Answer” in Afrikaans), the wider world might never have been introduced to the South African concept of “Zef.” According to Visser, the term means “you’re poor, but you’re fancy.”

3. Chappie

Visser and Ninja are movie stars — they have roles in the movie Chappie, the 2015 sci-fi film from fellow South African Neill Blomkamp. The “aggro, electro-rap cutups” (in the words of Spin magazine) play gangsters who try to teach the title robot to behave in a gangster-type fashion.

4. Music

Well, you can’t have everything. But the group’s four albums, which are full of not-safe-for-work hip-hop rhymes (i.e., Fat Faded F--- Face is one song title) delivered over electronic dance beats, have earned the band an occasional, if grudging, positive review.

5. The last Ninja

Is this tour the final curtain for our heroes? Last year, Ninja announced in an interview that Die Antwoord’s upcoming album, their fifth, would also be their last. “Die Antwoord are going to finish with a huge art project at the MOCAA (Museum of Contemporary Modern Art Africa) in Cape Town, South Africa, followed by a movie that serves as a retrospective look at their career,” he told a reporter. Visser quickly took to social media to contradict the story. But more recently, Die Antwoord announced that they’ll release a “final album,” The Book of Zef. The first single, released earlier this year, is Love Drug.