Ja Rule Hints At Plans To Rebrand Failed ‘Fyre Festival’ Under New Name
Ja Rule says that he hasn’t seen the two documentaries about the debacle that was the Fyre Festival, a would-be luxury music festival that was so poorly planned that attendees ended up sleeping in disaster relief tents in the Bahamas. Maybe if he had seen either doc, he wouldn’t be hinting at revamping the event under a different name.
“In the midst of chaos, there’s opportunity,” he said to a TMZ cameraman, before saying that he had already rebranded the Fyre Music app as “Icon.”
“I have plans to create the ‘Iconic’ music festival but you didn’t hear that from me,” he said.
Despite his apparent optimism about launching a new music festival, he expressed disappointment about the disaster that Fyre Fest turned into.
“It’s not funny to me, man,” Rule said. “It was something that I really, really wanted to be special and amazing and it just didn’t turn out that way.”
The rapper had partnered with entrepreneur Billy McFarland to promote an app that would make it easier for wealthy people to book A-list artists for their events. The ill-fated festival was meant to promote the app.
Billy McFarland, Fyre Festival’s promoter and organizer, is currently serving a six-year prison sentence for wire fraud. As the New York Times reports, he pleaded guilty to the festival-related charges against him in March of last year. Three months later, he pleaded guilty to two additional counts of fraud stemming from a fake-ticketing scam that he ran while he was out on bail.
As the Netflix documentary on the festival revealed, he used the email list from the Fyre victims as fodder for his bogus ticket-selling scheme. It was all recorded by videographers who he hired in the aftermath of the festival’s implosion. According to the NYT, McFarland sold $150,000 in fake tickets and defrauded 30 people out of their money.
Ja Rule’s new app—which is basically the Fyre App just rebranded—is now live and you can (supposedly) book Meek Mill, the Migos and others on it: https://t.co/QpbYAfDzV6 pic.twitter.com/DiUoS3x3Zj
— Complex Music (@ComplexMusic) February 6, 2019
Ja Rule didn’t get off scot-free, though. The Blast reports that he and McFarland have been listed as defendants in a $100 million class-action lawsuit from a group of festival attendees. According to the article, court documents show that the rapper doesn’t believe that he’s liable.
He reportedly claims that he’s being sued because he’s the only one on the Fyre team who’s currently wealthy. He disputed numerous allegations filed by the plaintiffs, stating, for example, that their complaint about there being no medical staff at the venue was irrelevant because there was never any need for that.
