The 'Blood in My Eye' rapper has sold the oil painting of the logo of his 2017 disastrous music festival, along with his handwritten note, for $122,000 in a recent auction.
- March 28, 2021
AceShowbiz - Ja Rule has sold his Fyre Festival painting for $122,000 (£88,500).
The rapper told Forbes that he decided to sell the oil painting of the doomed festival's logo - which had been hanging in the festival's New York office while it was being planned - because he "just wanted that energy out."
According to Consequence of Sound, the artwork was accompanied by a handwritten note from Ja Rule which read "F**k this painting," and went up for auction on Tuesday (23Mar21) with a reserve price of $60,000 (£43,500).
The buyer, who has chosen to remain anonymous, purchased the piece via Ja Rule's new currency company KickFlip, which allows artists to sell physical work by using NFT (non-fungible token) form.
The Fyre Festival was billed as a luxury music festival with Ja Rule and Blink-182 among the acts set to appear, but the event turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, with music fans and thrill-seekers, who paid thousands to attend, left stranded without proper accommodation or amenities.
He was subsequently slapped with a $100 million (£77 million) class action lawsuit following the disastrous 2017 music event, but he was cleared of wrongdoing in 2019.
However, his Fyre collaborator Billy McFarland was not so lucky. He was sentenced to six years in jail after admitting two counts of wire fraud connected to the ill-fated event. He also forfeited $26 million (£20.1 million) as part of the judgment.
Ja Rule is not letting the disaster put him off festivals. After narrowly dodging the multi-million-dollar lawsuit, he's now planning to run his own ICONN event.
