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Ja Rule says he hasn’t seen either Fyre Festival documentary, which might explain why he thinks reviving the event is a good idea

By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 10 October 2019

Ja Rule is guilty of fraud. He made us believe he’d seen the Fyre Festival documentaries when he hasn’t. Or the other way around. Could be the other way around. His current position is that he hasn’t seen them though.

Appearing on US TV show ‘Watch What Happens Live’, the rapper was asked by host Andy Cohen if he’d seen either of the documentaries on the disastrous festival in which he was involved.

“I have not”, he replied. “I lived it, Andy. I’m good”.

This is a turnaround from earlier this year. After the documentaries appeared on streaming services Hulu and Netflix, many questioned how much Ja Rule knew about the fraud being committed by his now jailed partner in the event, Billy McFarland. He defended himself, saying that he’d only learned about much of what had gone on behind the scenes from the films. “The crazy shit is I’m watching the docs in awe myself”, he wrote on Twitter.

Back then he also disputed his portrayal in the documentaries, saying that he’d had an “amazing vision” for a luxury event that other people failed to deliver. A position he still seems to be holding to. So much so, he’s quite keen to have another go, capitalising on the huge brand recognition Fyre has.

“Well, I mean, it wasn’t my fault”, he goes on, speaking to Cohen. “Here’s the thing, Andy, I wanna do it the right way, the right partners. And here’s what I know: I have the biggest festival in the world, even though it never happened”.

He adds that the biggest misconception about the original event was that he “committed a crime”. And, to be fair, he isn’t the one now in prison. Still, Cohen points out, in the Netflix documentary Ja Rule is seen saying that the massive discrepancy between the luxury festival ticketholders were expecting versus the field of disaster relief tents and little else was more “false advertising” than actual fraud.

Asked if he still feels the same, he says: “I believe now, after everything unravelled, it was a little of both”.

Seemingly, even after all this time, no one has explained to him that false advertising is a type of fraud. Still, I’m sure that won’t be an issue when he puts on the event again, which he is definitely going to do. He wouldn’t say he was going to put on a massively ambitious festival only for it not to happen. Any more than he’d say he’d watched something he hadn’t.