Enter the Ninja (Into the Big League)

Via BoingBoing–Okay, Internet, you can let your collective breath out: Die Antwoord, the South African rap group who mesmerized you last month with some of the weirdest music videos of all time, has a record deal. The trio’s first album, $O$ (available here to stream for free) will be released by Interscope–for those keeping track, that means they’ll be sharing a label with Feist, Dashboard Confessional, and Robin Thicke. There’s a dinner party we’d love to see.

Die Antwoord will also be touring Europe and America starting in April. Fellow South African Neill Blomcamp, fresh off an Oscar nomination for his film District 9, will direct their next video–which means, one hopes, that it will feature more aliens and fewer close-ups on frontman The Ninja’s tattoo collection (though the Richie Rich tat just below his left collarbone does seem oddly appropriate, given his haircut).

We’re just looking forward to finally figuring out what this “zef” culture the group keeps alluding to means: Reuters calls it “an Afrikaans term loosely meaning redneck,” but then again, as The Ninja himself definitively explained to New York magazine, “We not trash, we are fuckin’ fancy.” We admire that kind of confidence!