I've never had any strong opinions about Ja Rule one way or the other, but this doc makes him look like a shady asshole. It makes you wonder how much of Billy McFarland's actions he was aware of and how much he knew about the state of the company and the festival.
It sounds like he knew everything was fucked and that Billy was lying to raise money and he just went along with it anyway.
When this scandal first broke, I thought that Ja was brought on board as a patsy, because the real crooks wanted someone else to take the bulk of the inevitable public outcry.
I don't have a problem with pillorying him, as long as the real crooks do hard time.
Well the main dude who orchestrated all this is in prison now, so the hard time is being done. He was sentenced to six years.
As for Ja Rule, we don't know what the documentary DOESN'T show us, but from what it does show us it seems like he at least had an idea everything wasn't on the up and up. There is even a phone conversation in the documentary with him after the festival collapsed where he is trying to keep everything going and insists that it wasn't fraud, just "false advertising."
I agree
shareYeah I thought his part in it was mostly promotional, but nah, he was there all the way through, wasn't he? And yeah, that line at the end about "false advertising".
He was all about spin there...and still seems to be.
I don't know how much money the guy has, but hard not to think there's something wrong about leaving the islanders with nothing when his name is attached. Couldn't even flip a few grand at the lady who spent her life savings feeding everyone?
As far as I know, the dude has done absolutely nothing for anyone who got scammed...and seeing how he's some famous rapper, its pretty difficult to believe that he couldn't have done SOMETHING, you know? Especially with how much he was involved in the promotion...seems like he and his name were integral to that part of it. I couldn't say for sure, but he definitely seems like a pretty p.o.s. person to me, personally.
Yeah, he seems that he was involved all the way through and stayed involved even after the massive failure of the festival itself, presumably because he still wanted to get the app launched. Seems he was fairly hands-on too, at least hand-on enough that he knew what was going on at every stage of the game.
I also wondered how much money he has. He strikes me as someone who may spend money at about the rate he gets it, and that's why he's out hustling and getting involved with shit like the Fyre Festival. In that case, he may very well be cash poor. And I'm just speculating here, but I could see his legal counsel advising him that offering any kind of money could be construed as an admission of guilt or something along those lines. But yeah, it seems kind of shitty that a celebrity like him who would you think has money is not willing to at least make sure these poor ass Bahamians get paid for their labor.