The Internet is full of cats that play keyboard and fat kids in love with Star Wars. But of all the Internet’s stars, no one has made such a lightning quick ascension to true success than the South-African zef-rap group Die Antwoord. Made up of psychopathic rapper Ninja (South African artist/hip-hopper Waddy Jones) plus Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek, their frighteningly awesome video for “Enter The Ninja” exploded so violently that just a month or so after the video hit the web, the group has signed to Interscope Records.
Not one to ever drop the act (if it is one at this point), Ninja told BoingBoing.net some of the most sagely wisdom you could ever find in this burgeoning age of Internet stars battling the mainstream record paradigm.
“When we did the big meeting with Interscope, Jimmy Iovine [the label’s Chairman] was telling me all about how badly their business has been harmed by the internet,” Ninja said. ” I can understand that but I said, ‘Jimmy, I want to give you a piece of samurai advice: Become the enemy.'”
But just because he’s mastered the art of becoming a star via the World Wide Web doesn’t mean he understands the process.
“I don’t understand how it happened any more than they do, but I understand how rare it is,” he said. “The funniest thing has been the people on the Internet angry that we were ‘fake.’ The only people who thought we were some kind of hoax were from the U.S. and the EU. This is just real, it’s who we are.”
The band, which lists its interests as William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Eminem, and toys from Friends With You, will release five albums in total with Interscope. Their first, $O$, is streaming on their official site right now.
According to BoingBoing.net, they’ll also likely to be performing at this year’s Coachella Music Festival, though this has yet to be confirmed.
If you happened to miss out on the boom, enjoy the video that started it all below. And watch out for their Neil Blomkamp (District 9) directed video coming to an Internet near you soon.
