This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally
MIA rider requests cheese, crackers, burkas
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 9 February 2012
US site The Smoking Gun, which just adores bringing to light those outlandish demands famous music types tend to make on their tour riders, has set Super Bowl bird-flipper MIA next in its sights as the subject of an embarrassing rider-based revelation.
Seizing MIA’s present notoriety (following, of course, her controversial appearance during Madonna’s halftime Super Bowl set) as an opportune moment to release part of the rider from the Brit rapper’s 2011 tour, the site highlights reasonable requests (water, mixed nuts, and a ‘European’ cheese and cracker tray) alongside a specific requirement that there be three females, aged 20-25 and of “same height and body shape”, with “stage presence and groove to the music”, present at each venue
All your average celeb stipulations, apart from one other thing; the trio of extras must also appear “wearing full covered Burkas”.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone who has seen MIA’s stage show (or, for that matter, her new ‘Bad Girls’ video) though the fact that the Burka-clad extras are casually listed above requests for things like a “selection of quality chocolates (Ferrero Rocher)”, and “nice push soap and nice handsoap”… well, it’s jarring.
Read the rest of MIA’s rider here.