Die Antwoord.com hack is over, but the questions remain

The hack that wiped everything off the website of South African hip-hop act Die Antwoord, is over. It seems that everyone involved in the sorry saga has decided to move on and get back to the business of musical world-domination.

For nearly 48 hours there was no word out of Die Antwoord, the hip-hop superstars, who burst to global fame through their seductive use of YouTube and Facebook. Some took the silence to be indifference, but it turns out that there was frantic activity going on behind the scenes trying to sort it out. Early on Friday morning this post appeared through their social media channels: “OK F*k. Dirk The Oracle has finally chilled the f*k out. Dirk said sorry for hacking into our site after we took it away from him 2 days ago while he was busy popping pills and f**king whores in Hillbrow. Dirk has finally finished the DieAntwoord.com.The last thing he f**ken has to do is type out all our translated lyrics which he said is taking him f**ken long, so that will only be up tomorrow. Jissis.”

For two days, the message on the site simply read “Dirk f*cks whores.” It became clear that Dirk was the web developer who was building their website and clearly there had been technical glitches. A few days earlier, this post appeared from the band: “Fokken fok! There was a f*kken glitch in the matrix. Our interweb countdown just got a extra 24 hours added to it! Dirk Our f*kken interwebsite oracle is not answering his f*kken phone. He is probably f*kken stoned or something. F*k. We can’t f*kken believe this. We going to call someone else now to go to Dirks house and f*ck him up while we find a new oracle. Jissis.”

Shortly after that status update went out on Facebook, the hack kicked in and shut down the whole website. Now that the new site is up and running, it showcases everything that the band is about. Fresh, original content, well-presented and simple with buckets of attitude.

But I can’t help thinking that this was not a real hack. Perhaps the site was unfinished, perhaps “Dirk” needed another few days to get it up and running, and so someone on the creative team conjured up a “hack” that would buy them some time to finish the site? It’s just a theory, and I might be wrong. But if Dirk was really the one hacking his own site, why would he put up the message “Dirk f*cks whores”? As if somehow that is a big achievement and something to be proud of. If someone else was attacking Dirk, then it makes sense to write that. But Dirk himself writing that? Doubtful.

No matter, the site looks fantastic and we can chalk it up to another exciting episode in the unlikely story of the Afrikaans hip-hop who rode the web to global musical fame and fortune.