Music

Ja Rule’s $12,000 Luxury Festival Turns into Total Disaster

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

Fyre Festival was pegged as a luxurious event held over two weekends in the Bahamas, and organised by Ja Rule’s Fyre Media company. But not even the DSLR-shot videos of Bella Hadid and other model friends frolicking on the beach, or a lineup boasting names like blink-182, Skepta, Major Lazer, Lil Yachty, Rae Sremmurd and Disclosure (a DJ set, let’s be clear) were enough to make the festival kick off according to plan.

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Its first weekend started today (Friday 28 April). As part of the experience, punters who’d paid anywhere from about $4000 to $12,000 per head were flown from Miami to Great Exuma, gearing up for their beautifully orchestrated VIP experience, with its meal options, “rustic, tented spaces” and “sunset views”. Instead, they got this:

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’d just dropped five months’ rent minimum on literally three days of trying to see Skepta’s head onstage for a few minutes without losing all my friends and instead was marooned on a beach in a flimsy-looking “geodesic dome built out of incredibly sturdy, yet lightweight material” with a takeaway box as part of the meal plan I’d paid actual cash for, I would be pissed. And people are, with “Fyre Festival” now becoming one of the most worthwhile Google searches you could type in if you need a quick laugh on this otherwise relatively average Friday.

Even if not staying in one of the advertized villas, you’d still be looking at a $1000 price tag for the weekend—excluding flights—to sleep in a tent. At the time of writing, the festival hadn’t updated its site quite yet, so it still promises that “you’ll be flown round trip on a custom, VIP configured Boeing 737 aircraft between Miami International Airport and Exuma International Airport on Great Exuma”. What actually seems to be happening, though, is flights being turned back at Miami International Airport, with those on the island already staying in tents reportedly being offered cheese slices on dry, untoasted bread, and blink-182 pulling a quick ‘Homer backing into the bushes’ by cancelling their appearance already. Fair enough, lads.

Read more on Noisey UK.