I represent South African culture… This place… a lot of different things. Blacks, whites… Coloureds, English….

So begins Die Antwoord’s debut album, $0$. That’s right, dollar signs. Representing Zef culture, South Africa’s white, post-Apartheid redneck community, Die Antwoord makes shiny, grimy world party music.

How to describe their sound? Let’s take M.I.A.’s electro-African beats, the trailer-trash soul of a Kid Rock music video, with a little old-school 90‘s Aqua (think “Barbie Girl”) on top. Die Antwoord, Afrikaans for “The Answer” strikes each of those notes. Recently shaking up the blogosphere via Hipster Runoff and Pitchfork, this South African rap group has entered the music scene via the gimmick route, but they be here to stay.

To be honest, I don’t always know if I like all of their music. At times they seem to exude a type of world-conscious cool, the songs bursting with synthesizer blips and tinny drum machines, with a solid array of guest rappers from the South African hiphop scene. And their music is perfect for dancing.

At other times, they seem a little, well, gross. Like rat-tail gross, or baloney and white bread without flossing gross. What from afar seemed to be so goofily glitzy seems sweaty, sun-baked and tacky, as Ninja raps about masturbating, pelvic thrusts on video (his junk flailing wildly under his boxers) and says things like “drop tha muthafuckin’ beatbox, dog.” Yo-Landi Vi$$er, who’s pretty despite her one-inch bangs and mullet, sings in a high-pitched, metallic chirp and all but strips in the music videos, the results painfully unsexy.

But their best song, “Beat Boy,” seems to be strongest when they combine the elements of world-party awesome and trailer trash. Over stellar couplets like “look in the mirror, you can see it’s true, two nice boobs and a penis too” and the most painful beat-box intro I’ve ever heard, the song evolves over its eight minutes into a solid dance track. Though a little light on the bass end, the production makes up for it in style, and may be a well-needed break from your standard Justice muscle-flexing.

Along with making a case for the talents of Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek, the music speaks from a post-Apartheid South Africa. The layers of race and class concerns are astounding: music empowering an underprivileged class of white descendants of slave owners, displaced by a genuine need to break the half-century of legally imposed racism. Holy shit! A room full of cultural studies majors couldn’t navigate the politics of this band.

But the politics are just a tiny part of this puzzling, awkwardly funny band. Watch some of the videos circulating on youtube (I recommend “Zef Side,” which has mock interviews and a minute or so of “Beat Boy”) and you’ll feel like they’ve taken a permanent lease in your brain. What starts as revulsion will keep you coming back, sometimes dancing, sometimes amused, but ever curious to figure it out.

One last note on their puzzling entry: watching their videos, your inner hipster will think “next Chocolate Rain,” but remember early 80’s Prince? His music was disgusting. He wore nothing but sequined jackets and bikini bottoms and sang about fucking his sister. And it was awesome.