*Ja Rule’s Fyre Festival in the Bahamas hadn’t even officially kicked off before it was postponed on Friday morning for being a total disaster.
According to Variety, the two-weekend concert on the island of Exumas — organized by the rapper and entrepreneur Billy McFarland, had promised “a cultural moment created from a blend of music, art, and food.” Tickets ranged between $1,000-$12,000 — and some VIP packages as high as $250,000 — with amenities including private plane and boat rentals, massages, and local beach tours.
But attendees hit up social media late Thursday with reports of an unassembled festival site, lost luggage, and inadequate transportation, Variety reports. Also, flights to Exumas from Miami were eventually canceled because the island was “over capacity,” according to reports.
Scheduled headliners Blink-182 cancelled their appearance late Thursday; the status of other headliners, including Pusha-T, Migos, Disclosure, Major Lazer, was unclear at press time. In a statement, Blink-182 said, “We’re not confident we would have what we need to give you the quality of performances we always give our fans.”
In postponing the event Friday, organizers tweeted: “After assessing the situation this morning and looking at best options for our guests, we cannot move forward as we hoped we could.” They added that they are working on scheduling flights for those already on the island.
According to reports from would-be concertgoers, the site is more like a hurricane disaster staging area, with incomplete tents and boxed lunches instead of luxury accommodations and celebrity chef-prepared meals. One attendee told Billboard, “They’re basically disaster relief tents. With a mattress on some sort of bed frame. They’re not that uncomfortable, but the tents are so poorly made that they’d blow over in a second if there was any wind or rain.”
The concert had was announced on Instagram months ago with a video featuring Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski that showed people sunning on an island “once owned by Pablo Escobar,” riding jet skis, and luxuriating on yachts. See below:
However, in the weeks leading up to the festival, the Wall Street Journal reported that several of the headliners had not been paid their advances, although later this was rectified. On April 17 the New York Post published a story headlined “Are Fyre Festival organizers in over their heads?” which cited a source as saying “attendees have not yet seen pictures of their ‘villas’ on the fest’s private Bahamian island,” while another source said, “It feels like they have good intentions, but are out of their league … Several companies bailed on working with them because they were very disorganized. They don’t return calls.”
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