Die Antwoord’s music video for Enter the Ninja has been chosen as the 2010 Video of the Year on social networking site Myspace.
Granted, it is a fairly informal list, with suggestions coming from fans, rather than being based on actual viewing figures, but it certainly gives an indication of the impact the South African act have made internationally.
The video, which went viral after it was featured on Boing Boing, one the internet’s best-read popular culture blogs. Soon after it appeared on the site, Die Antwoord became a trending topic on Twitter.
The two videos were released simultaneously, and both received extraordinarily high viewing figures on YouTube. Enter the Ninja has to date been viewed more than 8-million times (not counting views of duplicated versions of the video on the site) and Zef Side, a short promo and “introduction” video, featuring snippets from Beat Boy, another track off their debut album $o$, has been viewed over 5-million times.
The band caused controversy when their video for Evil Boy, which featured what the LA Times described as “overabundance of penile imagery”, was pulled from YouTube for breaking the site’s obscenity guidelines. An edited version is now available on the website.
See the full Myspace Videos of 2010 here.