Ja Rule just made $122,000 from selling a Fyre Festival painting. The artist said he wanted to rid his home of any traces of the failed 2017 event, telling Forbes, “I just wanted that energy out.”
According to the outlet, Ja was able to sell the 48″ x 60″ oil painting to an anonymous buyer through the nonfungible tokens (NFT) exchange platform, Flipkick. TMZ writes that Ja initially set the asking price at $600,000; but settled for $122,000 as NFTs.
As a parting gift, Ja also reportedly included a handwritten note with the artwork that read: “Fuck this painting.”
“When I first had it made, I was energized. I had embarked on a new business,” Ja told TMZ about the art piece, which features the orange Fyre Festival logo painted by artist Tripp Derrick Barnes.
“But then it became a symbol of what could have been,” he continued. “For me, it’s done and over with.”
Ja was previously cleared of all wrongdoing in the festival fiasco. Billy McFarland, his Fyre Media Inc. co-founder, was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay $26 million in restitution for mail and wire fraud charges.
The “Always On Time” rapper has since put the infamous event behind him and graduated from the Harvard Business School Online program last month.
Ja was also vocal in the GameStop and Robinhood stock controversy earlier this year. The 45-year-old encouraged users to trade stocks on Robinhood, but then was outraged — like many others — about the platform’s restrictive policies.
“People are mad. People are angry and they should be,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” at the time. “This is the app that claims it is about free trade, and they took that power away from people.”
See a picture of the Fyre Festival painting via Ja Rule’s Twitter below.