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Fyre founder Ja Rule wants to have another go at staging an “iconic” festival

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 15 February 2019

“In the midst of chaos there’s opportunity”, Ja Rule told TMZ this week. Which will be why he’s relaunched what is essentially the Fyre talent booking app and now wants to stage a festival along the lines of its failed predecessor.

The rapper and Fyre Festival co-founder recently complained about his portrayal in the two documentaries about the doomed luxury fest – saying that he was also surprised by many of the revelations contained within them. Although, when stopped by TMZ in LAX airport, he admitted he hadn’t actually seen either of them.

Still, I suppose he was there at the time. Maybe he’s already learned everything he needs to learn about how to do it better next time. Not working with his Fyre Festival co-founder – champion fraudster Billy McFarland – would be a good start. Which is presumably easier for him to do now that McFarland is in jail.

“It’s not funny to me, it’s heartbreaking”, he says of the fallout from the Fyre debacle. “It was something that I really wanted to be special and amazing, and it just didn’t go that way”.

“But in the midst of chaos there’s opportunity”, he goes on, before referencing how the Fyre Festival was actually designed to launch a talent booking app him and McFarland were working on. “I’ve got my new platform, rebranded and rebuilt, and it’s an amazing platform”, he adds. “It’s for artists”.

Indeed, new booking tool Iconn is very similar to the Fyre booking app. At launch, it allows users to make offers to book artists including Cardi B, Childish Gambino, Shawn Mendes, Zayn Malik, Maroon 5, Bebe Rexha, Chance The Rapper, Big Boi, Conor Maynard, Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora, Snoop Dogg, Ja Rule himself, and more.

Given the similarities, he is keen to stress that the Fyre app was a separate venture to the Fyre Festival. The app side could have been a viable business, he reckons. And still could be. But there’ll be no flawed festival to take it down this time, right?

“It is the most iconic festival that never was”, the rapper says of Fyre Festival. “So I have plans to create the iconic festival. But you didn’t hear it from me”. Oh dear.

Speaking of Billy McFarland, as we almost were, one of the many, many lawsuits brought against him in the wake of the Fyre Festival collapse concluded earlier this week. McFarland was ordered to return almost $3 million plus interest to one investor in the failed event.