Album Review: Die Antwoord "Donker Mag"

1 out of 5

I'm gonna start this by saying that Die Antwoord's third album, "Donker Mag", is one of the most disappointing things I've heard in a long time. Which is funny, because how are you really supposed to process the music of a group that is gleefully destructive, rarely serious and excels at making dick jokes scary? Like Tyler The Creator and his Odd Future cohorts, Die Antwoord made a name for themselves by releasing an abstract mix of left-of-center hip-hop and pop with bizarre concepts and visuals that did well to pull in people briefly, but is genuinely too abrasive to hold anyone other than die hard fans. The one big difference between this album and let's say Tyler The Creator's "Wolf" is that where Tyler (and OF) understood they had to mature and experiment with ideas away from gore and sex (in doing so releasing the aforementioned 'Wolf', one of the best hip-hop records of the last few years), Ninja and Yolandi crank up the sex talk to 11, and in a move that some may believe impossible have dumbed down their overall lyrical content to seventh grade boy status. Where past songs like "Enter The Ninja" skewed traditional hip-hop mores in a way that left you wondering if it was real or not, or the unmistakably danceable "Fatty Boom Boom" made you want to cover yourself in body paint and twerk on hot asphalt, this record leaves you deciding between the juvenile Eminem-clone "Raging Zef Boner", a screaching ode to Ninja's raging Zef boner, or the catchy vagina anthem "Cookie Thumper" that gives Yolandi the room to use her possessed baby doll voice to purr the lyrics, "Snookie Cookie, kitty kitty kitty kitty". The other big problem on Donker Mag is something that ruins the flow of so many hip-hop albums: constant skits that do nothing but waste time and break up the fluidity of the album so that your finger's always on the "skip" button. I still appreciate Die Antwoord's gonzo image and bizzaro rap, but Donker Mag feels forced and tired, and in some ways imparts the idea that they aren't sure who they are anymore. Everyone has a sophomore slump, it appears theirs was the third time around.