I'm just completely obsessed with Die Antwoord.
In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.
Die Antwoord is super pop. It's a pop music.
Zamajobe is great. She's a terrific singer from South Africa.
I went through all these different phases. But it always felt like I was impersonating something, so I went back to some of the music I grew up with, like music from South Africa and the '80s stuff. I stopped suppressing it, and I stopped trying to be cool.
I'm a big fan of Die Antwoord, which is a different style than I normally listen to.
I listen to Ustad Vilayat Khan's 'Raga Khamaj' and 'Raga Jaijaiwanti' virtually every morning, a lot of Abdullah Ibrahim, Michael Kiwanuka, Savages, and contemporary Ugandan pop.
Zef is like dirt, it's like scum. There was no zef movement before we came along.
My first introduction to African music was by my mother, who bought the 'Pata Pata' album by the great Miriam Makeba when it came out. Now that is an album. What a voice.
I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up.
Die Antwoord will be presented to the world as a wild and savage rap crew from the deep, dark depths of Africa.
I think there's no way of avoiding the South African or African influence from coming into my music, just because I spent 19 years of my life there. Being a kid, my early musical experiences were there.
