Rapper Ja Rule. (Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for City Harvest)

The disastrous Fyre Festival wasn’t the first time that entrepreneur Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule have over-promised and under-delivered as a duo.

During the D.C. launch of McFarland’s elite “community of self-driven entrepreneurs and professionals” in May 2015, attendees were initially promised a free Ja Rule concert, which was scuttled a day before.

Unlike the Fyre Festival— the $4,000-25,000 “transformative” music festival in the Bahamas that left attendees stranded and wondering why they paid top-dollar for disaster tents and bread with cheese— the scuttled concert did not end in multiple $100 million class action lawsuits and a ban from future business there. Wale performed instead.

D.C. was the second city to see Magnises, a benefits program that promises millennials perks, after it launched in New York City. As the company explained it in a post celebrating its year anniversary in the District, “We conquered Manhattan, while having a blast doing it. The next step? Expansion … The Washingtonian area is a market ripe for growth.”

Starting the Monday of launch week, the D.C. Magnises website promised a free Ja Rule concert at the Howard Theatre that Thursday, as part of a series of gratis events designed to drum up interest in the service. (Others included suit making and whiskey tasting.) In the interest of full disclosure, I immediately RSVPed “yes” to the Ja Rule concert, which also advertised free vodka drinks.

However, the evening before the show, I received an email around 6 p.m. that said “Ja Rule is unable to perform at the last moment due to unforeseen circumstances.”

(The phrase “unforeseen circumstances” may ring familiar to those following the Fyre Festival fiasco—a tweet from the festival’s account announced that “Due to unforeseen and extenuating circumstances, Fyre Festival has been fully postponed.” What, exactly, those circumstances are, aside from an utter lack of of preparation, is unknown.)

The party was able to secure hometown hero Wale, who did the moonwalk onstage, as its headliner instead. And unlike the Fyre Festival, the Magnises D.C. launch at Howard Theatre did follow through on its promise of free vodka drinks. Reportedly (and likely relatedly), one of my friends did the worm onstage. Ja Rule, however, was not a part of the deal.

Bizarrely enough, though, Ja Rule did perform in D.C. as part of a promotion for Magnises a week before the promised concert. He put on a surprise show for 400 people at Dupont’s infamous “party house,” shortly after D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine sued the residence’s owner The evening of Ja Rule’s concert, D.C. Police came to the Q Street house twice, according to Washingtonian. Magnises, which rented the house through Airbnb, told the magazine it was unaware of the litigation against the owner. The announcement that Ja would be at Howard Theatre came after this first show.

Since its launch, members of Magnises have complained that service doesn’t hold up its end of the the deal. This January, Business Insider spoke with seven New York City members who detailed cancellations, unwanted charges to their accounts, issues with scheduling, and other woes. Magnises is “Latin for absolutely nothing,” McFarland told The New York Post in 2014. “The name is made up, but it sounds grand, doesn’t it?”

But one thing Magnises did do was bring together Billy McFarland and Ja Rule.

So how did these two gems meet in the first place? McFarland explained during a panel discussion that they connected when he was trying to book Ja for a private concert for Magnises members:

I went to Instagram and found this guy named Reggie Muscles who claimed to represent and know Ja Rule. So I sent Reggie Muscles a direct message, and he said “Give me $500 plus money for Ja Rule and he’ll show up at your party,” and I said “Sure, why not?” I paid Reggie Muscles, and the next day Reggie Muscles brings in a guy named Big Fred. Big Fred says, “Give me $500 and I’ll get you Ja Rule.” I pay Big Fred. This happens two more times until I finally meet a guy named Gutter. Gutter’s a little smarter now, so Gutter asks for $1,000 and then “I’ll get you Ja Rule.” Now I’m in the hole big-time here, made an offer for Ja Rule, and Gutter called me a week later saying, “Ja Rule hates your offer, but if you get him a helicopter, he’ll come and do your concert.” So I said, “Shit, he lives in New York, why do I need a helicopter?” But I figured out a way to get him a helicopter for a 20-minute ride, and I book Ja Rule.

Due to my own unforeseen circumstances, I did not attend Magnises’ D.C. launch. Friends tell me that Wale only performed a few songs (though their memories of the evening are hazy, thanks to the intervening years and aforementioned free vodka) before leaving the stage, which then “turned into a big dance party. It was like a free for all.”

It wasn’t Wale’s first time working with Magnises. He performed at the company’s New York City clubhouse in December 2013. ““It couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes,” one audience-member told the New York Daily News. “The mic didn’t work for the first couple.”

Wale has also been a card-carrying member of Magnises, making him one of many celebrities to embrace the brand. “The team behind Magnises are some real Zuckerberg types,” he told Billboard in 2014. “They know what’s up and they know how to make stuff happen. Once I met them I knew they would be blowing up, so that’s why I got involved.”