From their inception, Die Antwoord have taken an audacious stance against political correctness. The fact that Die Antwoord are two South African satirists who’ve gone all-in to fabricate their campy street personas made the whole idea rather rich. In the past, frontman Ninja has asserted, however ironically, that we can’t expect hip-hop in other parts of the world to fall in line with American PC fervor. But much how Sasha Baron Cohen lost the thread somewhere between Borat and Brüno, on Mount Ninji and Da Nice Time Kid, Die Antwoord’s sharp satire has gone from a bit messy to making dick jokes at a middle school level—literally.
When child rapper Lil Tommy Terror guests on two back-to-back tunes early on, he doesn’t even make you laugh as much as your seventh-grade class clown once did. “Will I ever stop drawing penises?” Terror squeaks. “Never!” The next song he guests on is titled “U Like Boobies?” Likewise, “Banana Brain” is pretty much a euphemism for “Dick Brain,” while modern burlesque icon Dita Von Teese and Die Antwoord frontwoman Yolandi take the lead on “Gucci Coochie,” a song that may as well have been titled “Expensive Pussy.”
What does it mean that two women at Yolandi and Von Teese’s level of fame succumb to rap’s materialist-maneater trope in an intensifying gender-conscious climate? Or when Yolandi appeals to salacious father-daughter sex fantasies on “Daddy?” It's hard to say if it means something transgressive—or if it means anything at all—but by this point, it’s getting less and less credible to give Die Antwoord the benefit of the doubt. “She bounce around da club like a psycho little cartoon,” raps Yolandi—an unintended irony given that Die Antwoord are on the verge of turning into cartoons themselves.
Like most of the tunes on Mount Ninji, “Gucci Coochie” is most engaging when you turn your brain off. Like a more aggressive answer to ’90s electro outfit Prodigy, Die Antwoord manage to get as far as they do on sheer attitude and energy alone. Now under the mentorship of Cypress Hill/Soul Assassins anchor DJ Muggs (credited here as the Black Goat), Die Antwoord have grown more focused when it comes to crafting whole albums.
But even with Muggs and Chicago rapper God on hand as producers, Die Antwoord haven’t quite become the legit hip-hop they believe they’ve become. On the press release for this album—typically entertaining but tellingly devoid of actual information—Ninja declares that Muggs taught Die Antwoord to “unlock their hidden powers and rip the rap game a new asshole.” If that was the goal, there was really no way to prevent Mount Ninji from falling short.
Viewed through more modest expectations, though, Mount Ninji is not without its charms. The rapid-fire wordplay is crammed with tongue-in-cheek moments where Yolandi and Ninja switch on a dime between absurd braggadocio and clever self-deprecation. But even if you think that they’re getting better at their delivery, cleverness is not new territory for the pair who proved their mettle as performance artists well before they invented the characters they now play for a living.
Some of the album’s more out-there moments veer towards a demented form of cabaret where hip-hop serves more as a means to an end. It makes you wonder whether Die Antwoord would do better to market themselves as art-rap rather than the “real gangsta shit” that Cypress Hill’s Sen Dog rhymes about on “Shit Just Got Real.” In fact, almost the entire second half of *Mount Ninji—*eight tracks in a row—simply plods along in a downtempo void that barely raises a pulse. Jack Black’s hammy presence, for example, does nothing to add spice to the circus organ-driven “Rats Rule,” and the skeletal “Stoopid Rich” and “Fat Faded Fuck Face” could’ve benefited from more layering. As Die Antwoord's energy level putters out, so too does Mount Ninji, an album too faded and immature to make a lasting dent on the face of hip-hop, much less rip the rap game a new asshole. If nothing else, though, Die Antwoord still have a fair amount of entertainment value left in the tank, even if that tank is starting to dip below half-empty.
