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And Finally Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #86: Die Antwoord v Universal
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 11 November 2011
South African rap outfit Die Antwoord are claiming to have “pulled out of their record deal” with Universal Music (they being released through Interscope in the US and Polydor in the UK). You just read that and you scoffed, didn’t you? Scoffed away like a big scoffer. “That just means they’ve been dropped”, you think. Well you shouldn’t, because if Die Antwoord say they pulled out of their deal with Universal, then they did. In fact, the folks over at Universal seem to think they might still be releasing the group’s second album, which does add extra weight to Die Antwoord’s claims that it’s them who have made a break for it.
The duo claimed in a post on their website, which has since been removed (the latest entry now informs fans that singer/rapper Yo-landi Visser shot an AK-47 for the first time in February), that Universale had tried to make them write more mainstream music for their second album, ‘TEN$ION’, but they had refused and will now release that record independently on their own ZEF Recordz label.
Or in their words: “So anyway… Interscope offered us a bunch of money again to release our new album ‘TEN$ION’. But this time, they also tried to get involved with our music, to try and make us sound like everyone else out there at the moment. So we said: ‘You know what, hang on to your money, buy yourself something nice… we gonna do our own thing. Bye bye'”.
Rapper Ninja also told Boing Boing that the album would only be released in download formats and on USB sticks “because CDs are like motherfucking VHS”.
At this point, I imagine you’re still going with the ‘yeah, they were dropped’ theory. But then a rep for Interscope told The Hollywood Reporter that the company is “currently in discussions” with Die Antwoord about releasing the album. The rap group responded by posting a video for a new track they plan to release, called ‘Fok Julle Naaiers’, onto YouTube, which was then apparently blocked by Universal.
Posting on their Facebook page, Die Antwoord frontman Ninja said he was “fixin this UMG block bullshit right now” adding: “‘TEN$ION’ is releasing on ZEF Recordz, NOT on Universal/Interscope. Think it’s taking a while for this to sink into their brainz”.
So, there you go. That’s fun. It still remains to be seen if they’ve actually pulled out of their deal, and if contractually they are really able to. Though I believe Die Antwoord remained independent of the major in South Africa anyway, in which case it would be partially true that the new album will be released on the outfit’s own label even if the Universal partnership remains. Of course it’s quite possible that this is a scheme to get people talking about ‘TEN$ION’. And if so, well done to them, it worked.
But if Universal is holding out for some more radio-friendly material, ‘Fok Julle Naaiers’ doesn’t set a great benchmark. Translated from Afrikaans the title means “Fuck you fuckers”, and the track features some choice language in English too (Ninja explains, with slightly dubious reasoning, why you shouldn’t be offended here). Still not officially available on YouTube, you can nonetheless watch it via Vimeo here:
