South Africa’s Afrikaans hip hop kings released their third album “Skerm” at the end of last year. With a slightly darker tone and some great new tracks and arrangements for you to lose yourself in, it’s definitely one for heavy rotation. I had a quick chat with the Pretoria natives to find out what their plans are for 2015.
Jessica Kramer: One of the first things I noticed on this album is that there are considerably less collaborations than on your previous releases. Was there any specific reason for this?
Bittereinder: Not really. We just got stuck into the writing process, and the only tracks that really called for collabs were passed on to artists that we’d worked with before, three of our favourite rappers in the universe: Tumi Molekane, HemelBesem and Dutch rapper Tim Beumers.
JK: You did however pack a massive 44 artists into your Tribute track. What made you decide to that?
B: Just an idea that Jaco had been engaging with for a while. It started out as a tribute to SA music that we grew up with in the ‘90s and 2000s, and then branched out into a few current artists too.
JK: You focus a lot of your attention on getting older on this album – how has marriage, and hitting the 30s affected your songwriting?
B: 2015 is now Bittereinder’s 7th year of being a band. I think all the shows and travels and time in studio together have a bigger impact on our songwriting than hitting the 30s specifically (Peach hasn’t even officially joined that club yet!) and having six members on the team has only made us better. This is definitely the most meta-writing album we’ve done, consciously aware of our processes and making our observations part of the result.
JK: In ‘Jou Tyd Sal Kom’ you mention your audience changing. In your experience and opinion, how has the SA market changed in the past ten years, and how has that affected the music you produce?
B: Millennials are a crazy breed. Things move very quickly these days, and it would seem that fresh content needs to be produced at an alarmingly rapid rate for a band to remain “current”. In the face of this, we strive to keep making timeless art and music – that’s partly why we’ve only made three albums in six years. But the live-show-game is just as important to us as the studio, we keep trying to find ways of making our festival and club shows more engaging. We want people to dink, and we want people to dans, whether they’re old poets or millennial boppers.
JK: You have a track dedicated to the way English and Afrikaans mixes and moulds in a truly unique South African way. Do you find that writing in both languages frees up your creativity?
B: Yes. On “Skerm” we’ve definitely blended the two languages more than on the first two albums, hopefully in the kind of seamless way that they often blend in our society.
JK: I see you guys are heading to Europe for a couple of shows. You have always included Dutch artists in your work – how do the overseas crowds react to your music?
B: So far, really well. We love the links between Dutch and Afrikaans, it’s endless linguistic fun, all the Dutch shows we’ve done have been awesome. We’re also amped to play Berlin for the first time this year.
JK: Speaking of reactions – how have you found South Africa’s response to this album?
B: We had an amazing time touring the country in the last few months of 2014, playing cities we’d never been to before, meeting proper bittereinder-Bittereinder fans, and we’re looking forward to making some new videos for the new singles this year. People definitely seem to be digging the new sounds.
JK: All three members seem to be involved in a multitude of projects and creative outlets. How do you balance being so busy, and do you find that the different projects influence each other at all?
B: We’re so fortunate to have found each other when we did, mixing the worlds of language and visual art and music comes naturally to all three of us. We make time for our friendships, that’s probably the most important balance in the constant busy-ness.
JK: We’ve just stepped into the new year, so I must ask, what is in store for you guys as a band for 2015?
B: New videos and singles, lots of cool gigs, lots of travel, plenty of bons.
