‘It was an absolute Fyre Festival.’ Before Miami contestants were enlisted to save the world, another group signed up in Montreal. But where were the cameras?
The summer of 2017 was a whirlwind of high-profile projects. In London, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated with a week-long party to showcase the Royal family’s new jewels and to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday. But it was more than just glitzy pomp and pageantry. The Jubilee was also a chance to celebrate women in their 60s.
The theme of the Jubilee was #LetLivesMatter. Many groups took the opportunity to reach out to the younger generation to show them that they are more than just a trophy. The most well-known was the Fyre Festival—a six-day, celebrity-led party in which attendees received a range of exclusive experiences (or ‘fools’ depending on your point of view).
The organizers had secured celebrities to help in the project. The most well-known was rapper Kanye West. He, along with his wife Kim Kardashian, was set to host the Fyre Festival. It promised to be an epic adventure of the young and sexy.
But West didn’t just go to Fyre to film the event. He was also one of the event’s co-organizers. Over the course of his 30-something years on the music scene, he has become known for his philanthropy. When he was growing up in a wealthy Atlanta family, he was known as a party animal who had a knack for throwing a party to get his friends off. He had even been arrested at a party for fighting over a woman.
That is where his reputation for throwing parties gets him. After spending several years partying with friends, he would eventually get sober and focus on his music career. In 2003, West made his own comeback by releasing West Coast, a mixtape that mixed the music of the streets of Los Angeles with the hip-hop sounds of the West Coast. It was a critical success, so much so that he was asked to perform at the 2004 Grammy Awards. Four years later, he released his second album, The Life of Pablo. Its first and only single, ‘Runaway’, reached
