So, it's not really a big deal to "get" Die Antwoord at this point. The day after their music video for "Enter the Ninja" went memeviralworldwidebuzzweb? Sure, a person could be understandably confused (and delighted) by this unlikely South Afrikaner hiphop act and their almost too perfectly styled white trash "zef" aesthetic. But as more videos surfaced, and as more blogs and media outlets unpacked the band and their background (briefly: media savy art school couple with a penchant for performance art gags), well, it's weird to still see articles like this one boggling at how impenetrable it all is.*

It's not impenetrable. It's a joke. And a performance. And an art project. And its actors are insanely committed to pulling it off, to the point of staying in character in public at all times, to the point of frontman Watkin Tudor Jones (aka Ninja) flashing a full back tattoo of new Interscope album title $O$ (with the "O" as a yin-yang symbol for extra low-brow yuks). There are shades of Vanilla Ice here (white rapping, reverence for ninjas) or Eminem (white trash pride), but it's a Vanilla whose ridiculousness is intentional, an Eminem whose white trash trappings are put on. If anything, what Die Antwoord's rise most resembles is that of Andrew WK: an overnight sensation arriving as fully formed human cartoon characters with their own insular worlds ("zef," partying) and attendant anthems. (One wonders if Die Antwoord might someday attempt a performance art identity breakdown as weird and baffling as AWK's, possibly one involving yin-yang tattoo removal.)

Last night, Die Antwoord's act began with their DJ, robed and monster-masked, playing the throat singing sampled on the Beastie Boys' "Shambala," with headliner Deadmau5's light-up cube (darkened, black) looming over his shoulder. The diminutive Yo-Landi Vi$$er walked out in a white hood adorned with thick black-lined doodles, rapping over a lurching dub-step beat, soon joined by Ninja in an ash-colored hooded robe. From where I stood, you could make out their accents, their right-on-time cadences, but little more than the occasional "fook" of the lyrics.

I was ready to hate these guys (and so, it seemed, was a lot of Deadmau5's crowd, a teenage raver hell of testosterone-y muscle-T bros and flesh-baring girls, many suffering from the kind of superhuman pastiness that only the combination of adolescence and club drugs can provide). And then something funny happened. They played "Enter the Ninja," their hit, as their second song, and as Ninja rapped his ridiculous triumphalist verses (his double-time a little less convincing than, say, Yelawolf's) and Vi$$er sang its silly "butterfly" chorus and the two of them did little synchronized signing with their arms, I was wholly endeared to them. Like, I suddenly remembered that I fucking LOVE tricksters in art and music! Here were these guys going hard on this gag, and the scam was totally working, all the way to the three album deal (really? three?) with Interscope. He wanted to be a ninja; now he is Ninja. Heartwarming, really.

The rest of the set mostly alternated between dub-steppy hip hop halftime and jock jam techno beats. Tellingly, the crowd went apeshit for the latter, boiling into a pogoing, fist-pumping monster at Ninja's hypeman command, but grew inattentive for the former, clapping in 4/4 time over a dub-step beat that obviously wanted to wobble and swing, as if trying to impose their preferred rhythmic grid over what the music was actually doing. When the music dropped out for Ninja to do a brief a cappella, the crowd seemed to lose interest almost entirely, chatter rising against the MC's rapping. Dude behind me at two different points in the set: "we don't like you," "their music's sooo boring" (keep in mind, the latter complaint comes from a Deadmau5 fan).

Ninja offered "a little educational lesson," let loose a string of incomprehensible Afrikaner gibberish, and then taught the listless kids a zef "yo momma" joke; after the associated call and response song, Ninja dedicated it to "all the haters, cuz Die Antwoord are better than you" and pulled a "no duh, right?" face. Vi$$er disrobed from the gold lame outfit she'd worn for "Rich Bitch" down to hot pants and a half-shirt, eliciting huge cheers from some dudes, for the song "$copie," with its teasing chorus of "I got what you want boy...and you're never gonna get it/so you might as well forget it" (the "get it" sounding almost Aussie) and its potentially troubling "no means yes" bridge. They played "Beat Boy," with its Bronski Beat lyrical hook, all club beat and fast rapping, Ninja shaking his lanky limbs out, eyes closed, head lolling, as Vi$$er sang the chorus.

They set ended with Vi$$er alone onstage, delivering a "zef" salute and a largely inscrutable "fuck you" rant (I though I heard "fuck the hip kids"; a friend thought it was a "fuck you" to everybody). She skipped off the stage singing "na na na na na" in her pipsqueak voice before delivering the last words, "whatever, man."

I'm never going to listen to Die Antwoord's music like for pleasure or anything—choosy post-colonialist joke rap fans choose Das Racist—but after last night's show, I kind of like these jokers.

*Nistuh Abebe is one of the sharpest music writers out there, so I assume he's just playing to a general audience that has perhaps not steeped themselves in the Die Antwoord discourse over the past year.