Die Antwoord - S.O.S. (CD)

Representing the Lady Gaga Era's dark underbelly, South Africa's Die Antwoord are the real Little Monsters of their time, brought to fame by a series of videos that looked like David Cronenberg and Keith Haring were co-directing. On their debut album, $O$, the music is just as phantasmagoric, unsettling, and bursting with the same sick humor as their videos, but there s also the same amount of care put into the product. Even as these incredibly busy hip-hop-meets-rave productions rocket toward the brink of chaos, the listener is harnessed in by layers of hooks and plenty of cheeky musical ideas. First, there s the setup: a duo of South African s trashiest trailer kids, including a lead male rapper, Ninja, who is obsessed with his namesake plus a albino kewpie doll, pixie-voiced back-up singer, Yo-Landi Vi$$er, who often channels her inner sex goddess even when she s traditionally unsexy. A third, shadow member, DJ Hi-Tek, supplies much of the music, making wonderfully outlandish decisions like sampling Smile.dk s sugary hit Butterfly for the massive Enter the Ninja, a hypnotic motivational track that should pump up any given mutant before they enter the ring. When Scopie - this album is chock-full of NSFW South African slang -- samples Short Dick Man, it s clever, and borrowing from the Bronski Beat for the epic sex track Beat Boy is just one example of thealbum s fascinating love of old synth music, from new wave to gabba hardcore with a little love thrown dubstep s way. Jamaican dancehall is referenced on Evil Boy, which turns Little Red Riding Hood into a story of phallic bragging, as is dancehall s iffy relationship with the batty boy , because Die Antwoord are hardly politically correct. Elsewhere, your mom s private parts end up in a Fish Paste jar as an insult,and Ninja s idea of a sexual encounter always requires post-coital mops and buckets. If it matters, none of this is real, and Die Antwoord are actually conceptual artists, presenting exaggerated versions of their inner zef . Whoever they are, $o$ is utterly unique and downright dazzling if you dream of a Grand Guignol hosted by P. Diddy.