Ja Rule said during an interview on “The Breakfast Club” Wednesday that he still thinks Fyre Festival was “an amazing idea,” despite the fact that the failed festival never happened.
The music festival left attendees stranded, co-founder Billy McFarland in jail for defrauding investors and attendees and provided enough heinous and hilarious material for two documentaries, one each on Hulu and Netflix.
But despite the festival’s bad rap, Ja Rule has continued to voice his support for the idea behind Fyre and talked about potentially putting on another festival.
“Here’s the real shit. This is real shit. The Fyre Festival was an amazing idea,” the rapper said. “Let’s not act like every-fucking-body wasn’t coming to the Fyre Festival. It was fucking done wrong.”
Ja Rule and Billy McFarland together at an event.
He added, “It was organized bad. The idea of it was dope, the marketing was dope, everything was done very right on that end. It just ― the execution was extremely bad, man.”
Ja Rule said many people have reached out to him about doing another, but if given the chance, he wouldn’t involve his former partner, McFarland.
“I’m mad at Billy,” he said, adding that he hadn’t spoken with him and didn’t intend to have further communication with him. “He lied to me, man. He lied to me in a lot of ways.”
While people have blamed the 43-year-old rapper for his involvement in planning and promoting Fyre, he said in tweets he wrote after both the documentaries came out earlier this year that people involved in the festival tricked him.
“I had an amazing vision to create a festival like NO OTHER!!! I would NEVER SCAM or FRAUD anyone what sense does that make???” he said on Twitter, adding in another tweet. “I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray!!!”
Ja Rule performs during halftime of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Milwaukee Bucks game on Feb. 23 in Milwaukee. The rapper has talked about organizing another event like the failed Fyre Festival.
But if Ja Rule does end up wanting to do another festival, he may have a partner in Oren Aks, a former Jerry Media employee who helped promote Fyre Fest and was featured heavily in Hulu’s Fyre doc, “Fyre Fraud.”
In an interview with HuffPost published in April, Aks expressed mixed feelings about working with the rapper again, but didn’t totally rule it out.
“I feel like I want to say yes, just because it’s Ja Rule and you kind of get hypnotized from celebrities and shit,” he said, although his “red flag warning sign is going off the charts right now.”
“Obviously I can separate my feeling from reality and I see what he’s done ― his role and all that. I wouldn’t join him in a venture,” Aks added. “But I don’t know. It would be cool to vindicate myself and get to work on a really successful music festival, you know?”