England international soccer star Jesse Lingard might have just secured a move to Nottingham Forest this week, but what’s really on his mind is getting Mzansi’s very own international DJ star Uncle Waffles to perform at his birthday party.
Taking to his Instagram Stories recently, Lingard posted a video of Uncle Waffles’ recent reel – which featured a delirious crowd – from a performance in Amsterdam.
He captioned his story, “Need @unclewaffles_ at my birthday fr fr (for real, for real)”.
Clearly taken aback, Waffles responded a few hours later by reposting his post on her stories, with a crying face emoji and the comment, “yo, WHAT?”
Lingard is a known fan of amapiano and has previously posted videos jamming to “AmaNeighbour” by the late Killer Kau and Mr JazziQ, as well as “Sosha” by Lebza TheVillian, Sino Msolo and Toss.
Over the past few days, a rate card purported to belong to Uncle Waffles has been making rounds on social media after it was posted by the infamous Musa Khawula account on Twitter.
“Uncle Waffles charges R80 000 for an hour's set for indoor bookings and R120 000 for outdoor events,” Khawula tweeted.
“For international gigs Uncle Waffles charges $25 000 which is equivalent to R420 760 for festival gigs and $18 000 which is equivalent to R302 947 for indoor/club gigs.”
Given Khawula’s history of spreading fake news, it’s unclear whether this rate card is authentic. But even if it is, prices which range from $18000 to $25000 would be light work for the former Manchester United star.
His new deal with Nottingham Forest is reported to see him earn a whopping £200 000 per week. That’s just over R4 million per week, making the Dj’s steep performance fee a fraction of Lingard’s weekly wage.
Lingard isn’t the first international sports star to show love to one of South Africa’s amapiano stars in recent times. His former teammate, friend and French International, Paul Pogba is a known amapiano fan.
Earlier this year, the World Cup winner posted a video exercising to “Abo Mvelo” by Daliwonga.
Most recently, Formula 1 legend Lewis Hamilton used Musa Keys’ hit single “Selema (Po Po)” as the soundtrack to his latest Instagram Reel.
Uncle Waffles, on the other hand, continues to tour the world and leave audiences in awe of her popular on stage antics.
Over the next few weeks she’ll be playing in European countries like Finland and Germany.
She’ll also be playing several shows in the United Kingdom, in London and Birmingham.
Lingard, whose birthday is only in December, will be hoping that he can find some time to make his way from Nottingham to catch one of her live shows while she’s in town.
That’ll be much cheaper for him anyway, not that it matters.