Ja Rule To Recreate Fyre Festival As Business Partner Remains Jailed

Even as his business partner and the co-founder of Fyre Media, Billy McFarland, was fined nearly $3 million by the insurance company, EHL Funding, and was sent to jail after the Fyre Festival was canceled in April 2017, rapper Ja Rule said Thursday he was planning on taking another chance at making the festival happen.

When the rapper was stopped at Los Angeles International Airport by a reporter and asked whether he saw any of the two separate documentaries on the festival fiasco made by Netflix and Hulu, Ja Rule replied he had not yet. “I mean it’s not funny to me man, it’s heartbreaking to me. It was something that I really wanted to be special and amazing and it just didn’t turn out that way. But you know in the midst of chaos is opportunity,” he told TMZ.

He added after the festival turned out to be a disaster, he started working on an array of different things, including a new online platform he “rebuilt and rebranded” which was going to be different than the Fyre app, hinting at the idea that he might make another attempt at organizing an enormous-scale music festival yet again.

“It is the most iconic festival that never was,” referring to the Netflix documentary, "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened." "So, I have plans to create the iconic music fest, but you didn’t hear it from me,” he said, walking away with a grin.

Although Ja Rule, original name Jeffrey Atkins, was not charged after partnering with McFarland in 2014 to organize the festival, the latter was sentenced to six years in prison in 2018 for one count of wire fraud and scheme to defraud investors, which also included misinforming financial details about his company. “In 2016, he started Fyre Media to build a digital app that would allow individuals organizing commercial events, such as concerts, to bid for artist and celebrity bookings at such events," according to the documents from the attorney’s office.

McFarland reportedly charged over $4,000 for tickets from visitors to attend the festival, scheduled to take place for the weekends of April 28 and May 5 in 2017 in the Bahamas. However, the festival fell far short of providing an ultra-luxurious private island experience that the organizers had promised with musicians and models from all over the world and it was canceled even before it began.

Frustrated festival-goers were forced to fly back from the islands and organizers issued an apology on the festival’s website, which is no longer online. “As amazing as the islands are, the infrastructure for a festival of this magnitude needed to be built from the ground up. So, we decided to literally attempt to build a city. We set up water and waste management, brought an ambulance from New York, and chartered 737 planes to shuttle our guests via 12 flights a day from Miami. This is an unacceptable guest experience and the Fyre team takes full responsibility for the issues that occurred,” the statement read.

Ja Rule also apologized for the failure of the festival. “I truly apology as this is NOT MY FAULT, but I’m taking responsibility. I’m deeply sorry to everyone who was inconvenienced by this…” read a part of his apology, posted on Twitter.