Don’t be fooled by their name, Internet Girl really is, in fact, a boy’s band made of lead vocalist Ntsika (aka TK) Bungane, and producers Matty (aka Neese) Burgess and James (aka Griggs) Smith. The 2024 edition of the Transmusciales in Rennes gave us the opportunity to sit with the three nice young men on the quiet afternoon which preceded their performance the same night on the stage of Hall 4 at the Parc des Expositions. Polite and demure, they don’t exactly embody the archetypes of classic punk rockers, nor do they reflect the current sounds coming from South Africa. In fact, the entire interview felt like a series of contradictions. Yet, in addition to their coke-induced charisma (see their song “cokehead”), Internet Girl’s contradictions lie at the heart of their allure. Their version of punk is anything but predictable, and their identity is shaped around this tension between authenticity and image.
Bad influence
Contrary to what one might expect from a punk band, Internet Girl is not overtly political. “We don’t like preaching, we don’t like telling people what to do”, says TK, who happens to be the one writing most of their lyrics. Rather than a collective call for revolution, their music embraces personal empowerment: “We advocate for people to just get up and do something, maybe not for the world or society, but for your life,” TK continues. “So, I guess, it’s a call to action.”
Still, it’s hard to deny they’re not fundamentally anti-establishment. “We’ve been fighting our local space because we were always separated from the people in our local scene,” Neese explains. “We didn’t feel connected to other South African artists and South African listeners. There is the whole fuck-the-system thing in South Africa”. The band readily admits choosing to remain hermits, preferring to spend time in their own company, avoiding clubs, playing FIFA and enjoying themselves at the beach.
“I’m on my phone, until the party ends. It’s way more fun,” they sing in “popstar”.
In a country, where amapiano, afrobeats and hip hop dominate, while gqom and kwaito shape the alternative scene, there is little space left for what the trio is doing. “It’s very hard to get venues, but things are developing in Cape Town. I think it’s buzzing. We’ve got a small community hosting shows, and they’re happening more frequently,” TK says. Still, they have found their crowds in festivals, such as Rocking the Daisies in Cape Town or House of Vans in Johannesburg, and venues like Smoking Kills (in Johannesburg) and the Factory (in Cape Town) which Neese describes as “intimate and sweaty”.
“There are some cool bands coming out. But especially in this alternative space that we’re in, it’s not dense. There’s not that many people. We, however, want to spearhead that,” Griggs explains, while mentioning being influenced by indie rock band Club Valley based in Johannesburg, and crossing paths with punk band Cistematic, also based in Cape Town. “The first time we played in Cape Town is because we made our own events and things kind of changed from there,” Grigg says. “It was an attitude shift that we’re showing out in our country.”
Currently, their primary audience is based in the US, where they have yet to perform. Not really surprising for this band: “We signed a deal before we even played a show together,” TK brags. A blessing which does not necessarily emanate from a privileged background. The band has been vocal about being disillusioned by the brutality of the industry. Their song “Brokeboy” reflects their shared experience. “We got through tough times together,” Griggs recalls. “There were times when we were low on money, and times when we made a bunch from deals. We’ve really been through the ups and downs together.”
“There was a disconnect,” Neese explains. “There were the numbers on our phone showing how many streams we had, metrics, and then, when going grocery shopping, no one knew who we were and we couldn’t afford to buy certain foods.”
They’ve not always been outliers. They started out doing trap music “because it was the cool thing to do,” Griggs admits. “Everyone was a SoundCloud rapper back then,” TK adds. Driven by a desire to be more authentic to their true selves, their style evolved. “The thing is, we get so excited about this new song that we write, and we’re not excited about this song from 2 to 3 years ago,” Griggs says. “We sometimes struggle to feel connected to those older songs, even though some people want to come and see them, because they have that connection to it. But we’re raining in the unreleased.”
Authentic and curated
Although they will not betray their sound to appeal to their crowd, their public persona is carefully curated. “If your social media presence sucks, no one’s going to come to the show,” Griggs says. “It was a different time when the Weeknd came out and no one saw his face. Everyone was talking about it, word of mouth. Social media wasn’t this constant variation of content over and over. Now, if you’re not really doing something face forward, and they can connect with you quickly through a short piece of content, you’re going to struggle.” It might explain why their track “government name” is so short, TikTok-ready. “We’re chronically online,” Neese admits. Through their online presence, the band has harnessed a following making the most of the tools enjoyed by Gen-Z. They’ve hosted a Discord channel to directly interact with their fans and embraced a sort of redneck core aesthetic in the visuals they post on Instagram.
“Every time I go out, people ask me where I’m from. Doesn’t matter when I’m on the internet a lot,” TK sings in “change my skin”.
Though they’ve managed to carve out a space in an environment that wasn’t initially receptive to their style, Internet Girl remains driven by the expectations of the music industry. In fact, the parasocial interaction they explore in the EP named after it, relates not only to their relationship with their audience, but also the one they entertain with the industry. “This is not exactly true anymore, but it came from a time when we had moved to Cape Town, and we had all this motion online and our label was overseas,” Griggs explains. “People from labels were always reaching out to us, but we didn’t feel like we were receiving the same sort of love in our country, which created a sort of disillusionment with the industry.”
That is not to say they do not subvert expectations. There is indeed a compelling irony between the way their band name – “not that deep”, according to Griggs – juxtaposes with their hyper-masculine energy. The dominant persona is reflected in the lyrics (“They treat me like a boss, they treat you like a baby”, TK sings in “Boss”), in their visuals and on stage: “We’re able to go on stage and to tap into the side of us that’s completely wild and animalistic,” Griggs says. An male energy that has become a defining feature of their music. “The biggest inspiration is feeling like a man and getting those people feeling the man,” TK says. Lately, he says it is his recent fascination for military history, and Napoleon especially, that has fueled some of the band’s inspiration.
An experience they’ve undeniably managed to translate well during their performance at the Transmusicales. Though it remains a deliberate performance designed to provoke some cathartic release. “That stuff is in us,” Neese explains. “That is the way that TK feels, but it’s not the way we act when we’re not on stage.” Offstage, Griggs insists they’re “just really chill guys and respectful people,” hopefully not embodying an overly-macho persona. “We have some decorum!”
Indeed, it would be a mistake to take their provocative lyrics at face value. More often than not, their songs are dosed in a certain amount of irony as they themselves make fun of toxic masculinity as seen in the song “Role Model”: “These rappers saying everything I put out’s hella gay. I told ’em said I’ll fuck you till you love me, that’s us. You heterosexual pick me, you too leng, I’d cuff”.
Mainstream and unique
Despite cultivating a misfit identity, the trio harbours a clear ambition of mainstream success. “We want to represent the alternative and left field of music that comes out of Africa as a whole,” Griggs says. To avoid being seen as nothing more than a niche act and appeal to a broader audience, Internet Girl seems willing to compromise. Indeed, Griggs explains wanting to create “a blend of sounds that you haven’t heard before and a stage presence you might not have seen before,” mere hours before performing a very convincing cover of Blur’s “Song 2”. That is not to say they are forgoing their South African origins. One example is their recent attempt to incorporate one of the many languages spoken in their country. “We wrote a song a week ago with some vernac,” TK reveals. “It’s fresh and it sounds cool.” Although, they admit the experimentation is still at its early stages. “As an English listener or someone who doesn’t speak vernac, it just sounds like mumbling”, Neese explains. “If you read the lyrics, it’s cool. But on first listen, it just sounds like it could be English, but you can’t hear it.”
In any case, and however awkwardly, they managed to carve out a space in South African music and on the international stage, Internet Girl has maintained a distinctive edge. Their appeal lies in these contradictions. They’re young punks, but their rebellion is less about tearing down the system and more about defining their own space within it. Whether it’s in their sound, their image, or their lyrics, they are unapologetically, and perhaps confusingly, themselves.
