GRIFFIN - Founder of WATKYKJY.CO.ZA

Unless you have been surfing the waves of the internet with your eyes closed, you would have heard about Die Antwoord.  The South African site WATKYKJY (What are you looking at?) were main players in the MADNESS that is the success of the South African rap duo.  I have been following Griffin from WATKYKJY for ages on twitter as I am both fascinated and incredibly proud of the talent that is coming out of my homeland.  In my opinion, the views and opinions that come from this man and most of the creative people that bounce from his site do more for our fucked up country than any knob end that is currently sitting in parliament. Not since Nelson Mandela have we had such positive change.  I think Griffin and his friends are not only part of but have started the revolution that is so needed in our complex land....and if you don't agree well, that's because you not on their level.  There is not an intro that I could type that could compete with the great chat I had with the man himself. So please, read on. (non Sowf Efricens, I will try to translate for you OK lovies?)


Let’s get straight to it, tell me about Die Antwoord? How long did you know them? When did you decide to give them a link on your blog?
I briefly met them a couple of years earlier (like 10 years ago) when they were still fucking around with different styles but we got together around 3 years ago when I interviewed them for Watkykjy. It was like the band was born straight from our website, becuase they were totally everything that was zef. Ninja told me that Watkykjy sort of inspired their band and that Yo-Landi has been into the website for a long time, so I gave them "homework". As a joke I told them to write a song called Watkykjy. Ninja phoned me like a week later and rapped the whole song to me over the phone. It was fokken insane. Well, actually, he didn't phone me. They didn't have money so I would get text messages or "please-call-me's" (these are messages you can send for free in SA when you have no phone credit, who says we third world?!, Owl) to phone them back. They fokken still do that! Back then they were so poor that they slept on the floor, so I helped them out by buying flights on my credit card to come play gigs in Joburg and Pretoria. 


They stayed at over at my house, but I was a bit of a doos (cunt) - I got so drunk at their gigs on two occasions that Ninja had to drive my car back home. Their gigs were so fokken next level that they made dik zak (heaps of $$$) and they paid me back. I put up their first album on Watkykjy for people to download for free for a couple of months, because they didn't have an interwebiste at that stage. It worked fokken well, because everyone knew all the lyrics to their songs at every gig.





So watkykjy has been running since 2000…what was the blog world like back then in South Africa and what inspired you to start it?
The earth was still pretty much flat and the interwebs in SA was dial-up with those demonic sounds. Blogs didn’t exist so we (me, Chopper Charlie, Skipper Glen and SuperDeluxe3000) got together on Fridays, drank loads of whiskey and beer and started building a website as a hobby. We wanted a website where we could express the zefness that most people only got to know 10 years later. The name “Watkykjy” came about in a weird way. Like twofold. We got moered (beaten up) in pubs a lot. I’ve never been bliksemed (fucked up) in my life until I moved to Pretoria in 1995. Since then we got poesklapped (a hiding..but a POES hiding so its worse than a normal one) at least once a year until like 2001. Snor City’s (snor means moustache) people usually tuned you “Wat kyk jy?!” to start a fight for no apparent reason. Like you were looking at his goose’s poes (girlfriends vagina) or something straight through her dress and panty, but you were actually just checking out the brannas (brandy) special and it happens to be in the same direction of the chick, but not even close to her boobs, let alone her poes. 

The second thing that attributed to how the name came about was also a bit weird. SuperDeluxe3000 was working for some Afrikaans music program on SABC2 and they had to go make a music video for a band called “The Radio Rats”. In Klerksdorp. On a Sunday. SuperD asked me to come with. I had a fokken huge hangover and slept in the car on the way there. The tune was called “Don’t Shoot The DJ” and I ended being the DJ dude in the music video. 




The main dude of the band, Jonathan Handley (who is also a medical doctor) welcomed us into his house that morning at around 10am and asked us what we’d like to drink. He had coffee, tea, cold drink or wine on offer. The other peeps took tea and asked for wine, because of my fuckedness. Jonathan produced me with a bottle of wine labelled “Watkykjy? – ‘n Heerlike Laat poes”. On the back it had instructions:

1. Suip die hele  bottel uit. (Drink the whole bottle)

2. Pomp (fuck)

3. Kots (vomit)

4. Kyk jou vriend diep in die oe (look at your mate in the eye)

5. Skree “Watkykjy?!” (what you looking at?)

6. Moer mekaar. (fight)

A couple of weeks later, we had a party at the house where Chopper Charlie and SuperDeluxe3000 and their chicks stayed (in the Moot area in Pretoria). It was kind of a rof party. At around 5am after most people had left and some were either passed out or pomping (fucking) in the garden,  we were sitting next to each other on the deflated jumping castle in the living room, clutching half empty bottles of whatever the fuck we were drinking and staring at the tekkie footprints on the ceiling. We started shouting “Watkykjy!” at each other. That is basically how Watkykjy started from there and to this day, is still a hobby…


I can't actually stop laughing. Are you Jo’burg born and raised?  What do you love about that city?
I was born in HF in Pretoria but we lived in Potch, so that is kinda strange. I grew up in V-Town with my best tjommie, Chopper Charlie and then moved to Pretoria to study. I stayed there for a couple of years and then stayed in Nigeria for around 4 years. I’ve been living in Joburg for 4 years and can honestly say that Nigeria was better than Pretoria and that Joburg is better than Nigeria. Joburg is cool because everything I need is around the corner. Oh ja, and I mainly moved here because my fiancee lived here. So we bought a house and now everything is cool. It is also close to my job, which I hate.

Um...4 years is a long time to live in Nigeria! What makes you angry about South Africa? What do you love about it? What would you change? What is the biggest misconception?  What are people spot on about?

Corruption is rife and crime levels are pretty fokken high. This all leads to poor service delivery and money wasted on kak things such as 69 million Rand for a youth day party which gets politicised which in turns bring education on its knees. But we have awesome weather, befokte nature and a very diverse culture. The coolest thing is that South Africa has no natural disasters (apart from Julius Melama) - (ANC youth leader - he really is a doos). If I could change anything, I'd probably get rid of 80% of parliament and get more people to pay tax. You can't run a country where only 8% of it's people are tax payers. I'm not quite sure how we've made it this far without our poepols (assholes), tits and balls falling off. Biggest misconception? People still seem to think that we're the same Nelson Mandela era country that hold hands and give blow jobs to rainbows. What are people spot on about? Africa will eventually belong to China and we're all going to work in factories making cheap shirts, vibrators, running shoes and those little green plastic army men for the rest of the world.

Sweet! Could you live anywhere else?
Easily. People are citizens of the world. I would probably choose between Australia or the USA. Any place with cool weather is cool with me. The UK is very lekker (nice) to visit for max 2 weeks at a time, but the weather there is so fucked that I'd probably become depressed or an axe murderer or a depressed axe murderer. I could stay in France or Spain, but I'd probably just end up being drunk the whole time because I don't understand what the fuck people are saying. If I had to learn a new language to go live somewhere, it would probably be Spanish. All one really needs is sun, friendly people and next level infrastructure. Never will I go live in a country again where I have to club in with my friends to buy the fucking hotel diesel for its generators, just because I want to like... I dunno.. eat shit and sleep? Here's looking at you, Nigeria...

Actual real life LOL!

What do you think of Die Antwoords international success?  Why do you think they are appealing to people who have no fucking clue what they are saying?
I'm very happy for them and fokken proud of them. I feel like a proud dad who's drunken washout kid finally got his shit together and passed 8th grade after the third attempt. There's never been anything like Die Antwoord before. People find this appealing. It is a whole package that just fucking works. There is also a mystery about them and every time when you see something they do, you think to youself "Jissis, that video is pretty fokken hectic. How will they level up after that?" But they are like a very fokken difficult computer game that just keeps levelling up. Make a date in your diary: Around end of Feb the interweb is going to explode again when the Rich Bitch music video drops. It is just insane what they did with it. Shortly after that, the interweb will explode again. It will be like 911. You never expected so many planes in such a short time to fuck up things...

Have you ever worn Yo-landi's gold pants? Do they smell a bit? Be honest.

There is no fokken ways I will fit into those pants. I'm the same height as Ninja, so there will be some serious tight ball-splitting and crying in the shower. Yo-Landi wears one of my old tops quite regularly - the red Shoprite Checkers one with the yellow smiley faces on. I gave it to her as a gift a couple of years ago. Ninja gave me the Evil Boy shirt he used in the music video and he wore my ninja suit in Enter The Ninja. They gave me a next level clothing item from the Rich Bitch music video after they wrapped up on the set, but you can ask me those things in March.

Oh I will be! Watkykjy is a platform for so many other products and brands? Does it annoy if people think it is just all about Die Antwoord?
Not really. Watkykjy has been a hobby for the past ten years. It's case of fit in or fuck off. I don't go around on Saturdays telling old ballie what colour to spray their VW Beetles they've been working on for 10 years in their backyard.

Did the traffic on your blog go from pretty good to mother fucking insane pretty much over night? Or was it steady?
It was steady until the revamp by a next level designer called Anja Slaptiet. She really did a good job on the design and then there was a steeper climb in traffic. With Die Antwoord it climbed some more and now we're leaping over buildings, waving at the children.

What makes you feel poes cool? And what makes you want to give a poes klap?

I love a lot of things: Good food, alcohol, my fiance, people who don't have cricket bats up their asses, Xbox, weekends, jet skiing when it doesn't fokken rain, people with a good sense of humor, puppies, weekends, my car, travelling, my friends, next level music, being a stupid poes sometimes on purpose. Fok, this just made me realise that I want to get two Rottweiler puppies now...

Things that I fucking hate are: Robert Mugabe, Julius Malema and raisins. Jissis, I fokken hate raisins. For the rest of the list, we wrote a book called "Is Dit Net Ek Of Is Als Tos?" which is also in the intro of Die Antwoord's song "Watkykjy?" if you listen carefully.

Wat dink jy om die Obnoxious Owl? 

Your question should be "Wat dink jy VAN die Obnxious Owl", jou fokken brood. You seem like a fun person and those spandex pants are just about ready for a broeknaai.

HAHA! He is talking about this outfit and 'broeknaai'...well, I'll let you figure that one out yourself. Other than giving me kak for my poor Afrikaans, Griffin is a fucking brilliant dude. Hopefully on my next trip home we can share a beer and trade spandex. He has just joined my list of favourite countrymen. Love, Owl x

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