Ja Rule is planning another “iconic” musical festival following the ill-fated 2017 Fyre Festival.
Less than a month after two documentaries — Netflix’s Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud — detailed the catastrophic failure that was Fyre, the rapper revealed to TMZ that he is in the process of planning a second music festival.
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“In the midst of chaos is opportunity,” Ja Rule told the outlet. “I have plans to create the ICONNic music festival.”
The Queens rapper, who co-founded the Fyre Festival alongside entrepreneur Billy McFarland, recently announced that he has been working on a new talent booking app called ICONN (Ice Connnect). “Created by industry veterans,” the app allows users to easily hire talent like Cardi B, Ashanti, Fat Joe, DMX, Snoop Dogg, Shawn Mendes, Cassie, Future, and more.
The app has already drawn skepticism from critics who have pointed out that it is similar to the FYRE app, which subsequently prompted the 2017 FYRE Festival, which was created as a promotional tool.
“It is kind of similar to what that app was,” Ja Rule said. “The app was separate from the festival. It was different teams working on the app and the festival.”
Although he plans on creating a follow up event, the “Mesmerize” rapper did admit that he feels remorseful for how the FYRE Festival ended.
“It’s not funny to me man, it’s heartbreaking. It was something that I really wanted to be special and amazing, and it just didn’t turn out that way,” he said. “It is the most iconic festival that never was.”
As detailed in the two recently-released documentaries, FYRE Festival was promoted as a “luxury music festival” on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma, in which attendees would sleep in lavish tents and bungalows and beachfront properties while being treated to high-end cuisine and performances from Blink-182 and Migos.
It was soon revealed, however, that what was promised wasn’t what festival goers were given. Upon their arrival, attendees were provided with unfinished FEMA tents as their accommodation and received prepackaged sandwiches for meals. Many on social media noted that there was barely “any food or water or security or electricity,” eventually leading to the event being cancelled, thousands of guests stranded on the island, and many of the workers going unpaid despite the months of work they had put into the festival.
Co-founder Billy MacFarland was eventually sentenced to six years in jail for defrauding investors, and was later ordered to refund more than $2 million. Ja Rule, however, did not face any criminal punishments, though he did receive a fair amount of backlash.
