Ja Rule has indicated that he has his sights set on getting behind another festival following the disastrous Fyre Festival, which spectacularly fell apart in April 2017.
The rapper told TMZ that Fyre was the “most iconic festival that never was” before announcing in a video Thursday that he is planning another fest.
″I have plans to create the Iconnic music fest,” he said, playing off the name of his new talent booking services app, Iconn.
Ja Rule came under fierce scrutiny on social media for his involvement and promotion of the failed Fyre Festival after Hulu and Netflix each released documentaries on the fiasco last month.
The Fyre Festival was sold to attendees as a lavish vacation on a private island in the Bahamas with gourmet meals, luxury suites and musical performances by acts including Tyga and Blink-182. The advertised two-weekend festival offered VIP packages for up to $250,000.
Instead, concertgoers arrived to rain-soaked tents and cheese sandwiches, which quickly became the viral social media symbol of the festival that was canceled on day one.
Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland is currently serving six years in prison after he pleaded guilty last March to wire fraud charges linked to the festival. In July, he pleaded guilty to more counts of fraud related to another company he ran.
Although Ja Rule was widely promoted as the co-founder of the festival, he has since maintained that he was “scammed” by the ordeal.
“I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray!!!” he wrote on Twitter last month.
“I had an amazing vision to create a festival like NO OTHER!!!” he wrote in another tweet last month. “I would NEVER SCAM or FRAUD anyone what sense does that make???”
After the release of the Fyre Festival documentaries, its organizers were also widely accused on social media of exploiting Bahamians during the chaotic series of events.
“The images that *really* stuck with me from the Netflix documentary, however, was of Bahamians toiling and working the land to [fulfill] the whimsies of a now convicted felon, who sold a product that did not exist,” BuzzFeed UK editor Elizabeth Pears wrote on Twitter last month.
“Those people were totally exploited,” she continued.
In January, A GoFundMe campaign was created for Bahamian restaurant owner MaryAnn Rolle, who revealed in the documentary that she was not paid by the festival organizers and that her personal finances took a hit.
Ja Rule also told TMZ that the Fyre fiasco was “heartbreaking.” His potential festival’s working title is a nod to his new business venture, Iconn, which is similar to Fyre’s coinciding app.“You gotta understand that the app was very separate from the festival,” the rapper said of the Fyre app.
You gotta understand that the app was very separate from the festival,” the rapper said of the Fyre app.