Donker Mag

On June 6^th 2014, South Africa’s arguably most infamous band, Die Antwoord (which translates as The Answer) released their much anticipated new album, Donker Mag (Dark Power). The band, whose style I believe can most accurately be described as grimy psychedelic rap, had already whetted the palates of their fans with the booming singles, ‘Cookie Thumper!’ and ‘Pitbull Terrier’; however, after the brilliance that was their previous album TEN$ION the majority of the album is disappointing.

The band came crashing into the hip hop scene in 2008, originating from South Africa’s beach city, Cape Town. The lead male singer, Ninja (Watkin Tudor Jones), an angry looking man covered head to toe in tattoos, is accompanied by his soprano-voiced lover (or ex-lover as gossip magazines claim), Yo-Landi Vi$$er (Anri du Toit), to create a dark new sub-genre of rap that makes listeners feel both haunted, angry and amused at the same time. They stand out, not only for their accents but also for their obsession with South Africa’s ‘Zef’ sub-culture. To be ‘Zef’ is to be proudly white lower class, living in ‘the ghetto’ but having expensive looking street style; this look is seen in Die Antwoord’s acclaimed music videos, in particular ‘Baby’s on Fire’ from their previous album, TEN$ION. In fact it is Die Antwoord’s music videos, each with a different method of eliciting shock from their global audiences, which have made the band so famous.

The two videos released so far from Donker Mag, ‘Cookie Thumper!’ and ‘Pitbull Terrier’, are arguably the best singles on the whole album. ‘Pitbull Terrier’ is a thumping electro song that one can imagine would not be out of place in a dark sweaty nightclub somewhere in east London; the video sees Ninja running around with a very realistic prosthetic dog face, making it pleasingly disgusting to fans of previous Die Antwoord videos. ‘Cookie Thumper!’ is an awesome tune with a very ‘Zef’ music video set in a suburban South African orphanage. Yo-Landi plays the part of an innocent but very scantily clad school girl who is in love with a ‘bad, bad boy’ who has recently got out of prison; it is a disturbing yet addictive music video and an even better song that one can happily listen to on repeat. Yo-Landi raps in her seductive soprano tones in the verses, with sparse synth accompaniment; the chorus, while in Afrikaans, is something you will want to sing along to.

The album is very much a mixed bag, both in terms of genre and quality of songs; it is not a song you can sit down and listen to from start to finish, as there are some songs that are not worth a listen at all.

Aside from the two singles, there are four other reasonably good songs on the album, which is structured a bit like an Eminem LP with songs broken up by skits, including ‘Pompie’ which has a woman, who I assume is Yo-Landi, doing a really weird laugh for 1.16 minutes. ‘Ugly Boy’ sounds like it be written by Chris Brown, it is a very standard-sounding R&B song; it is nothing special but not altogether unpleasant to listen to – the chorus is pretty fun and Ninja’s rapping is fairly good, but lacking the raw energy of some of his other songs. ‘Girl I Want 2 Eat U’ is growing on me with each listen, and while it reminds me of an early 2000’s Shaggy song, it is entertaining and the lyrics are satisfactorily naughty, as the title suggests; I will say no more. ‘Strunk’ and ‘Donker Mag’ are both slow psychedelic tunes which one can imagine accompanying an episode of Skins or an indie film like 500 Days of Summer; needless to say they are not what fans would expect from Die Antwoord. ‘Strunk’ is a good love song, which features Yo-Landi hypnotically telling us how love is like being ‘stoned and drunk at the same time’ and while it could even go as far as being described as cute, it is fairly disturbing at the same time; the band were probably ‘strunk’ when they wrote it. ‘Donker Mag’ is the conclusive track to its namesake album; it is a trippy song where Ninja sings in a monotone voice, almost akin to a Bon Iver track, but with what I can only think is a synth organ accompanying him in the background.

The rest of the album is not great, with tracks like ‘Raging Zef Boner’ being fairly boring and sounding almost dated, like they are relics from 2005 that Ninja has dug up from his archives. The skits, like I have said before, are downright weird, but not in a good way. They detract from the quality songs of the album, and make sitting down and listening to the LP in track order unpleasant. All in all, the album is very much a mixed bag, both in terms of genre and quality of songs; it is not a song you can sit down and listen to from start to finish, as there are some songs that are not worth a listen at all. However, ‘Cookie Thumper!’ in particular lives up to Die Antwoord’s previous magnificence, and is arguably their best song, so is definitely worth a listen to!