Ja Rule Apologises to Restaurant Owner Ruined by Fyre Festival (and the Internet Gives Her $150K)

But did he chip-in on her GoFundMe page?

It has not been a good week for Ja Rule, which is a sentence that has remained true every week since Fyre Festival self-imploded in April of 2017 (or, to be a little more accurate, since mid-2003).

See, Netflix just debuted its damning (and highly compelling, because of all the self-owning) doco Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. In it, we learn how Fyre founder Billy McFarland and his former business partner, Ja Rule, tried to throw an exclusive music fest for rich kids on a private island, only to fail, spectacularly, condemning attendees to Lord of the Flies-like conditions, and cheese sandwiches. Cheese sandwiches!

It was just one of two Fyre docos to launch this month, as Hulu also premiered Fyre Fraud last Monday. Unfortunately, that one's not available in Australia at this time.

And though both docos have sparked controversy for their supposedly questionable ethics, viewers have eagerly consumed both and dragged Ja Rule, extensively, for his involvement.

Ja Rule yelling “C’mon guys!!” and saying “nobody died” on the Fyre postmortem call took me out — r.i.p. me

— k austin collins (@melvillmatic) January 21, 2019

Ja, for his part, has continued to insist that he was a victim of Fyre and McFarland as well. (McFarland was arrested in 2017 and charged with wire fraud; he’s now serving six years in federal prison.)

The schadenfreude is delicious, the internet agreed. However, anyone watching the docos likely at least shed a tear for Maryann Rolle, the Bahamian restaurateur who revealed she lost her life savings in the drama.

Even Ja was willing to acknowledge Rolle was hard done by, apologising to her and "anyone who has been negatively effected [sic] by the festival".

 

 

 

 

 

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My heart goes out to this lovely lady... MaryAnne Rolle we’ve never met but I’m devastated that something that was meant to be amazing, turn out to be such a disaster and hurt so many ppl... SORRY to anyone who has been negatively effected by the festival... Rule

A post shared by JaRule (@ruleyorkcity) on Jan 21, 2019 at 4:31am PST

Well, Rule can put his sorries in a sack, because the people of the web have done what the organisers of Fyre Fest never did: they have donated more than $US150,000 to her verified GoFundMe page. And they did it in seven days.

By her estimates, Rolle lost approximately $US50,000 from catering "no less than 1,000 meals per day" at Fyre Festival. Now, she has enough money to cover that debt, and then some.

Has she considered throwing a music festival with her new earnings?

Header Image: Netflix