Despite announcing their intended breakup for September 2017 and then putting a kibosh on the rumors, Die Antwoord has still managed to keep some focus on their last album, Mount Ninji and Da Nice Time Kid, which came out in 2016. Perhaps refreshing our memories in time to promote the next effort, The Book of Zef, the South African duo has decided to dredge up a song called “Alien,” which feels all too tailored for the present moment. Being that Mount Ninji and Da Nice Time Kid was released in September of 2016, what now feels like ample time before the political reckoning that came in November, the dark, lonely themes of “Alien” (similar to the dark, lonely themes of the track of the same name by Britney Spears–mashup please) are seemingly custom-made for the American immigrant of now–all perpetually threatened with expulsion at any given moment.
And with such looming threats is the stigma that comes with being an “illegal” “alien” in the country that once openly claimed to have built itself solely on the backs of immigrants (think of America as the pyramids and the wide-eyed, ready to work immigrants seeking a place in the promised land of dreams as the slaves [minus the part where slaves are ready to work]).
Directed by Ninja himself, the video commences with an ominous fluttering firefly meets caterpillar that seems to pay faint tribute to those sort of sinister openings to 80s teen horror movies. And yeah, life in America right now is kind of like an 80s teen horror movie minus the part where it’s all “hahaha” jovial and there’s like a cool eight-bit soundtrack making it all feel a little less scary. That said, Yolandi Visser, who already looks like an alien to begin with, appears as the titular extraterrestrial maligned by all she comes into contact with (despite largely keeping to herself among the abandoned and graffiti’d warehouses of Detroit). Lamenting, “I am a alien/No matter how hard I try I don’t fit in/Always all on my own, sad and lonely/All I want is for someone to play with me,” our alien is denied service at a speakeasy-looking diner where Ninja makes the rules in his American flag hat and wife beater. Walking in as discreetly as possible–hoodie over head, I HATE U backpack in tow–our alien tries to get by without incident, but the second her “nature” is discovered, Ninja thus points to the sign “No Aliens Allowed.”
Back out into the darkened alley, our alien possesses an aura of marked sadness until the firefly/caterpillar scuttles past, seeming to shout, “I’ll play with you!” For isn’t that the timeless thing that we all want, well beyond childhood? Just for someone to play with us (yes, that can mean sexually as well), to show us the goddamn time of day? But the insect isn’t enough consolation as a companion, with the alien eventually biting into it as she sits idly in a warehouse where another alien (played by Yolandi and Ninja’s own daughter, Sixteen Jones) is born–er, hatched. Slightly more human-like in nature. What is this supposed to mean? The more that immigrants give birth, the more diluted the concept of “ethnicity” becomes? Maybe. That the lyrics also speak to Yolandi’s isolated and misunderstood youth (“All the popular kids at school were always super mean to me and made me cry/I never knew what I should do so I just walked away and said ‘Fuck off and die'”) imbues “Alien” with that universal sense of not belonging that we all feel–regardless of additional persecution by an administration with witch hunts on the brain. And as our suddenly “at peace” alien lets its progeny, of sorts, out into the world while it remains inside the warehouse, it’s almost as if Die Antwoord is sustaining that age-old message: you always want your kids to have more–a better life–than you did. But it’s kind of hard to imagine subsequent generations being able to in the climate called now.
“Love Drug“–not to be confused with Uffie’s “Drugs“–is thus far the only single we have from The Book of Zef, and so it is that we must hang on tightly to “Alien,” so rife with newly relevant political meaning as it is. Plus, it’s ideal for creeping out the neighbors, who have likely already called ICE on you anyway.
