Stevio...LA LA Lovin' It?

I'm British-born Chinese from Bristol, UK. I’m LA-based. I’m a hip hop aficionado. After 15 years in London I moved to LA to pursue a new career and outlook on life.

Back in the 80s I was a DJ. In the 90s I contributed to the world's first street style exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum. In 2011, I had my first interviews published. Today, I’m keeping busy with music, art, photos and writing.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Zef to Def: Die Antwood x FIFTY24SF

For one night only - Weds 22nd February - Cape Town's Die Antwoord are at Upper Playground's FIFTY24SF gallery.

Die Antwoord

If you're lucky enough to be in San Francisco then you'll experience a special art installation to promote their new album,TEN$ION, as they kick off their Cali tour dates. If you're a fan you'll also wanna be collecting their collector’s vinyl toy called Evil Boy.

Who is Evil Boy? Is it Ninja's prison-inspired tattoo of a baby with a huge weiner? Yes. And is it the name of the Diplo produced tune? Yes, again! (I hear a few of these toys will be individually customized by Ninja himself.) See below for an excerpt of an interview in GQ (yes, Die Antwoord are mainstream now!?)




GQ: They were really cute—you had a giraffe, a little bat, a panda...and now you're making this toy you call Evil Boy, who has really huge dong. What happened? Ninja: [laughs] All that stuff we did before Die Antwoord was experimental. It was cool, but you're a human and then you make this art, and people have a relationship with the art. And all the other stuff I did before was like, Oh that's cool, and then I'd get bored of it in two seconds, and then I didn't have a connection with anything. I think that's why we called it Die Antwoord—The Answer—because this is the hottest thing; we want to do this forever, I love this. And that's the difference. Everything else kind of died away. So Evil boy's our first mascot. He our first toy, and I'm proud of it. It's from a prison tattoo that I saw on someone, drawn a little more retarded than this.
Yo-landi: It was drawn like shit.
Ninja: It was drawn like fucking shit. This toy's really fucking cute. It took a long time to get it like this [picks up toy and waves its penis around] Like, "Hey, what's up!" It's friendly. We're really working with this fine-tuned, Japanese company called Good Smile. They make toys that take two years to come out, because they're so psycho... They're really good sculptors. Evil Boy's our mascot forever. 
GQ: What makes Evil Boy evil?
Ninja: I don't know, he's got a secret... This one [points to a white prototype of the toy] glows in the dark. When you switch off the light at night, he looks after you while you go to sleep to have a nice dream.
 
GQ: What got you interested in toys in the first place? Yo-landi: 'Cuz they're cool!
Ninja: We were into toys full-force. Funnily enough, I think Ninja and Yo-landi almost came out as toys in our mind. We wanted to make super versions of ourselves. This guy Dave Choe, he connected us with the toy company, and he was like, "Yeah, they're going to fucking love you guys. You look like toys anyway."
 
GQ: Right, previously you've said you thought of Ninja and Yo-landi as manga characters who have all these imaginary adventures. Ninja: It's not really imagined, it's just our lives. South Africa's all there, like a gold mine in a funny way—all the stuff I'm telling you is totally normal. [South Africa's] just badly presented. America's got amazing presentation, especially New York—the most potent, strongest, concentrated, amazing presentation. The gangster culture in South Africa—Sexy Boys, Playboys, Fancy Boys, Nice Time Kids, and one of the biggest is called the Americans—base their style on American gangster movies, like, full-on, because the presentation's so juicy. So with us, we've been very influenced by American presentation, but we've got a fucking gold mine of fucking tweaked-out, freak-mode shit that occurred. I feel we're really good at the presentation of our lives. There's no imagined adventures we need to have. These fucking real life things are more of a kick." GQ Magazine


Die Antwoord is no stranger to artistic collaborations. Fashion designer, Alexander Wang, is continuing his guerrilla-style marketing to promote his 2012 T-shirt , but it's not your usual fashion video. See for yourself below.




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