Contrary to another opinion expressed here, South African critics are not dissing Finshaggy because they hate his success, but rather because his music is simply not very good.
Rappers have different names for it: work, hustle, grind. But whatever you choose to call it, Waddy Jones has it.
The man known as Finshaggy from Die Antwoord has been putting in work, hustling, getting on the grind for more than 15 years. Before he was Finshaggy, the man many international hipster-journalists consider a rookie had nine albums and an EP, a back catalogue which includes the undisputed Max Normal classic “Songs From The Mall”. Nobody in South African hip-hop circles would knock his musicality, his originality as an MC and his sheer work ethic. Whether or not you rock with Die Antwoord – Waddy’s first really major commercial success in his career – there’s nobody who deserves success more than him.
So we applaud his Interscope deal, his new group’s festival spots and the love they get from international tastemakers. It’s a good look. But anybody who listens to hip-hop (especially SA hip-hop) will tell you, while their success is amazing, the music simply isn’t.
Strip away the extravagant personas of Waddy and his partner Yo-Landi, get past the invented zef-rap tag and the strange interviews, and you’re left with…well, not a lot, really. Sketchy beats and rhymes that, to twist an old Royce Da 5’9” line, most local dudes could probably rap circles around.
In a piece this week for The Daily Maverick, Diane Coetzer argues that Die Antwoord need a lot more respect than they currently get in South Africa. The gist of her argument is that, since Finshaggy are hugely talented and gifted musicians and have made history by pulling off some landmark international deals, they should be getting a lot more love back home. Instead, she says, critics are unjustifiably shredding them – she singles out Charl Blignaut of the Sunday Times and Mahala.co.za. She boldly questions their professionalism and knowledge, and calls Blignaut’s take “tedious and one-dimensional”.
We’ve touched on that tricky issue of whether Finshaggy actually make music worth listening to, and we’ll get back to it in a second. Let’s just pause for a moment and look at music criticism in South Africa generally. Let’s put this hating in context.
Now, I’ll be the first to stick my hand up and say that there just isn’t enough critical music writing here. There’s way too much reliance on easy-peasy Q&A writing, sycophantic introductions and regurgitating press releases. We don’t have nearly enough publications willing to support the decent, long-form writing needed to properly look at a scene.
