Growing up, she describes herself as “a little punk” who was always getting into fistfights. That, coupled with the fact that she is actually very smart, makes people identify with her in a different way to anyone else.”īorn on Main Port Alfred, a small town on South Africa’s east coast, Visser was adopted by a priest and his wife and struggled to feel like she belonged anywhere. She has this split personality – the dichotomy between the imagery you see and the lyrics she is singing is fascinating. There’s some unknown factor about her that just makes you interested. Yo-landi has something that is hard to put into words. “Whether you love them or you don’t, you’re drawn to them.
“There’s something about Yo-landi and Ninja, they both have very unusual magnetism,” says Blomkamp over the phone during a break from editing the film. In the film, they play a pair of musicians-turned-gangsters who adopt a newborn artificial intelligence in the shape of a robot, Chappie. Like now.”Īfter amassing more than 200 million views on their YouTube channels, the group will make the leap on to the big screen next month when Visser and Ninja star alongside Sigourney Weaver and Hugh Jackman in Chappie, a family sci-fi drama by District 9 director Neill Blomkamp. But now and again we’ll do something when there’s new information to share.
With Facebook and Instagram, you kind of don’t need to anyway. “Like, ‘Are you a real band?’ Journalists wanted to slay us, tried to cut us down, and I just started caring less and less about doing interviews. “I got irritated with people asking us the same questions,” she says. She prefers to remain an enigma an elfin rave avatar whose life story remains relatively undiscussed. Visser rarely grants interviews, and never solo interviews – until now. Cheered on by the obsessive freaks and geeks that have claimed Die Antwoord as their own, they have become one of the world’s most visceral live acts, with crowds proclaiming their allegiance by chanting “zef, zef, zef” – an homage to the downwardly mobile South African street culture that inspired their favourite band’s trashy aesthetic. At the end of last year they confirmed their A-list clout with the cameoheavy video for “Ugly Boy”, with appearances by Jack Black, Marilyn Manson, Flea, the ATL Twins, an almost topless Dita Von Teese, and supermodel Cara Delevingne.
Since exploding on the scene in 2010 with their viral video “ Enter the Ninja”, Die Antwoord have compromised their vision for nobody, aiming to remain as “punk and fresh and kind of psycho” as possible. Flipping between Lolita songbird vocals and thugged-out raps delivered in a blend of English and Afrikaans, she has broken every approved music industry convention en route to success with her bandmates, rapper Ninja and DJ Hi-Tek. Visser, real name Anri du Toit, has fast become an unlikely pop-culture icon. But that’s what happens when misfits succeed. People want to fucking assassinate me.” It’s hard to imagine this five-foot tall mother of two should pose such a threat to the self-proclaimed torchbearers of decency and good taste in society. “I roll with bodyguards when I go back home to South Africa,” she says, looking around the room. Guests sneak glances at her, no doubt wondering where this fragile-yet-formidable life form with a silvery white mullet, corresponding eyebrows and little girl voice sprang from. Wearing a sweater bearing the legend ‘BO$$’ in large green letters across the front, the Die Antwoord frontwoman perches on a leather armchair and orders coffee and fresh fruit. Yo-landi Visser appears in the piano bar of an old-school west Hollywood hotel, looking like an albino gangster from another dimension. Taken from the spring 2015 issue of Dazed. Read our interview with Ninja here
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