Die Antwoord shot to fame, at least in part, by using social media to leverage their faux trailer-trash, multi-lingual flavour of rave-driven rap. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that the medium is playing a central role in promoting the group’s new album, Ten$ion.
The first inkling that it would as close to business as usual as you can get with the internationally renowned “Zef” group came in the shape of a teaser trailer for the album on YouTube. Since going live a few days ago, the video has received upward of 320 000 views. Bear in mind those views are only on the version uploaded to the group’s official account and that there are a couple more versions floating around out there.
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At around the same time, audio versions of the album’s first single “I Fink U Freeky” began appearing on YouTube. It’s a little more difficult to tell how well the single has been received so far, given that there are multiple versions of it on YouTube.
The group isn’t afraid of diversity when it comes to video-sharing either. A number of its music videos also appear on Vimeo.
The group then used its Facebook account to announce that the digital version of Ten$ion was available on iTunes and that the physical version would be available in CD and LP format from 7 February. Close on 300 000 people “like” Die Antwoord’s official Facebook page.
Back in 2010, it was the third most popular South African group on Facebook, with dance-duo Locnville and pop-rock group The Parlotones taking the top two spots. Since then, it has overtaken the former but remains a little distance behind the latter.
The group’s official Twitter account, meanwhile, has been voraciously plugging the new album, although little of the usual “Zef”, “Don’t give a fuck” attitude that made the group stick out from the masses.
The album does not yet appear to be available for iTunes users in the group’s home country, South Africa, to download.
