Our DJ Fishsticks is gay, and we make gay and straight jokes the whole time. It's pretty weird to touch another man's penis when you're not a gay.Ī lot of Americans are a little bit sensitive and shit but it's not really our problem because people have their issues and they should keep it to themselves. Wanga doesn't give a fuck- we're not anti-gay, we're just like, "whatever." The rap is actually a taunt, when he says, "Don't touch my penis/ I'm not a gay." That's pretty much the worst insult to Xhosa men- who are anti-gay yet they take 19-year-old boys' penises into their hands. Ninja: Another element in his verse is about how the real Xhosa men with the circumcised penises are unbelievably fucking homophobic. So we were like, "Oh fuck, you should start your rap with that." So when you play "Evil Boy" in South Africa around a group of people who know the language, you'll hear a lot of African women shrieking as if someone just stole their baby. You're not even supposed to say that aloud because people freak out about it. The worst words in the Xhosa language are " umnqundu wakho." It means you're a bumhole. So I asked him why he was speaking to me and he said, "Because you're cool, Ninja." Then he looked at my tattoo and said he wanted to be "Evil Boy for life." So I asked him what would happen if he didn't go to the bush, and he said that he wouldn't be a man and he wouldn't be able to speak to the other men. We thought maybe he just shouldn't go because 60 kids fucking died this year because their penises didn't work properly afterward and shit. This year, Wanga was supposed to go to one of these rituals because he wasn't circumcised.
He lives in this house in Cape Town and squats on a farm. We've known Wanga since he was a street kid. You get the ash from the fire and you rub it onto the penis and you rub it around your face. When you turn 19 you have to go into the bush for like one week with a blanket and your underpants- no shoes- and get your penis chopped up with a kitchen knife. It's part of a tradition that's in the black Xhosa tribe in South Africa. It's basically about tribal circumcision. Pitchfork: Even though some of the verse by guest rapper Wanga (above) is translated in the video I feel like a lot of people may still be confused by it. The point was to make your brain unable to get it all in so you can watch it a lot of times and see something different, which is quite nice. We put care into every single detail so that the background got as much force as the foreground. So with the "Evil Boy" video I wanted everything to move so it'd overload the senses. With the paintings in the "Enter the Ninja" video, I wanted to take the elements of drawings by retarded people and children and criminals and make that type of art three dimensional. So while we were on tour this year in all different countries like Japan, Switzerland, Norway, and Canada, I was writing notes the entire time and drawing illustrations and designing all the "Evil Boy" sculptures. We had this explosion, but the explosion was building up inside us for a long time so when it occurred- we just wanted to keep going with the same force and speed. I almost got frustrated in a weird way when "Enter the Ninja" came out and blew up because it's not even the tip of the iceberg- it's like a little sliver of the iceberg. Ninja: It's funny because we were feeling the opposite way about "Enter the Ninja". Well, maybe "logical" isn't the right word, but everything is based in some sort of reality, which is sort of shocking in itself. While the clip is another WTF-fest featuring weird monsters, raps about penises, a cameo by Diplo, and a woman with no nipples, it turns out there are logical explanations behind much of its absurd imagery. A little behind-the-scenes dirt couldn't hurt, too.įor this edition, we spoke with Die Antwoord leader Ninja, who directed the head rush of extreme rap-rave otherness known as the "Evil Boy" video. The men and women behind the camera are often overlooked in today's YouTube era, but this feature aims to highlight their hard work while showcasing the best videos currently linking around the internet. Director's Cut is a Pitchfork News feature in which we chat with music video directors about their creations.
From Squarepusher's "Come on My Selector" to Missy Elliott's "Da Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", great music videos are bursts of sound and vision that leave an indelible impression.