âI reached out to his agent at the time on MySpace. That's not a joke. I really reached out on MySpace.â
Sascha Stone Guttfreund, co-founder of the music promotion company ScoreMore, laughingly recalls the beginnings of his relationship with J. Coleâa bond that culminates on April 6 with the first Dreamville Fest.
The festival, co-produced by ScoreMore (recently acquired by LiveNation), will take place at Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. The lineup features artists on Coleâs Dreamville label like J.I.D, Bas, EarthGang, Lute, and Ari Lennox alongside Nelly, 21 Savage, SZA, Big Sean, Mez, Rapsody, Saba, Teyana Taylor, 6lack, and Davido. Headlining, of course, will be Cole himself.
Drawing an expected crowd of 35,000, Dreamville Fest is a long way from Guttfreundâs first shows with Cole back in the MySpace days. The Texas-based Guttfreund heard âLights Pleaseâ (and Coleâs seminal mixtape, The Warm Up) and became a fan. After reaching out through MySpace, Guttfreund, still in college, planned for the buzzing new rapper to come to his home state in early 2010.
âIt was actually the first tour,â he remembers. âI put âtourâ in quotations because it was four cities. It was the first string of dates that we ever put together, and we did it with Cole. It was literally us driving around the state of Texas in a pickup truck, with Cole headlining shows.â
Dreamville president Ibrahim âIbâ Hamad, who DJâd for Cole on that trip, was skeptical at first.
âWe pulled up to San Antonio and Sascha picked me, Cole, and Mike Shaw in a pickup truck, and he was a little white college kid,â Hamad recalls. âWe're like, âWhat the fuck is going on? What kind of shows are we doing?â But he was super professional. I think our first sold-out show was at Warehouse Live[in Houston]. It was eye-opening. We didn't know that we had fans outside of our city. That's how we started our relationship with Sascha, because he was in college and starting his business of doing shows in Texas. I remember having a conversation and he's like, âMan, I kinda want to keep doing this. What you think?ââ
âit made sense because of Cole's hometown and everything. And we always knew âDreamvilleâ just sounded like a festival name.â - Ibrahim Hamad
Keep doing it, they did. ScoreMore put on another series of Texas dates for Cole in 2011 (you can see some footage of the rapper at a benefit concert put on by a UT frat here), and everything progressed from there.
Three years ago, Guttfreund and the Dreamville crew took things to the next level by planning a festival. They chose Coleâs home state of North Carolina (he grew up in Fayetteville and currently lives in Raleigh), for a mix of sentimental and practical reasons.
âThe initial thing with Sascha was like, âYo, North Carolina's an untapped market,ââ Hamad explains. Dreamville artist Lute, who was born in West Charlotte, points out how monumental an event like this will be for his state: âIt's one of the biggest events that has really come to North Carolina, at least Raleigh."
âYou can drive there from New York, Atlanta, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky,â Hamad says. âAnd it's surrounded by so many big colleges and universities. Obviously it made sense because of Cole's hometown and everything. And we always knew âDreamvilleâ just sounded like a festival name.â
Putting on a festival, of course, isnât as easy as just having a cool name. The Dreamville team scouted locations, including Durham Bulls Athletic Park and Raleighâs PNC Arena, before finding Dorothea Dix Park, a new park that was formerly the site of a psychiatric hospital. Getting the okay to use the park took some politicking with the cityâs mayor, Nancy McFarlane.
Dreamville partner Adam Rodney says that Cole and McFarlane met at an event at Raleighâs Contemporary Art Museum, talking for an hour about the rapperâs goals (both career-wise and for the city). That relationship continued, and led to the Dreamville team beating out some stiff competition to hold the first festival in the park.
âWe have a very human connection with our fan base and our supporters. That's what I want to bring to the festival.â - BAS
âIt took a long time of getting the city on board and having them trust two young companies,â Hamad admits. âEven though it's Cole, it's not the easiest thing to convince the city or the state to just allow us to do this. So it took us a while.â
Dreamville Fest was originally supposed to happen in September 2018 in Raleigh, but it was canceled due to Hurricane Florence. For Rodney, a New Orleans native, that experience brought back bad memories of Katrina.
âThat whole experience was very, very tough on me,â he remembers. âIt just feels like I'm being haunted by these hurricanes. It was three years of work. And then for us to be watching the radar or whatever and seeing that storm come out of nowhereâthat was a tough call.â
At the time, Hamad was waiting on the birth of his first child, who would be born just a week and a half after the festivalâs planned date.
âI didn't know when the baby was gonna come, so I couldn't go to North Carolina,â he recalls. âAnd I was just on the phone the whole time with Sascha. We knew it was real when some of our vendors were like, âHey, we have to back out because the state and the federal [government] needs our supplies for this storm.ââ
Once a new date was found, planning began again, and Dreamville Fest was closer to becoming a reality. The delay ended up having unexpected advantages, as Dreamville artists had more time to build momentum. Hamad points out that the crew got lots of publicity as a result of sessions for their as-yet-unreleased compilation album, Revenge of the Dreamers III (theyâre âin the finishing touches,â Hamad insists, waiting only on some sample clearances), which featured dozens of heavy hitters. The labelâs flagship artist, J. Cole, also had a string of notable features, âtook overâ NBA All-Star weekend, and released his biggest chart hit to date, âMiddle Child.â
âOur label is very much an idea, more so than an actual physical place.â - Ibrahim Hamad
For the Dreamville team, the festival is about far more than ticket sales or promotion, though. Itâs a chance to, in Guttfreundâs words, â[give] people the opportunity to experience Dreamville as a physical location and as an event.â For Dreamville artist (and Hamadâs younger brother) Bas, that means the day is really all about the fans.
âWe have a very human connection with our fan base and our supporters,â Bas explains. âThat's what I want to bring to the festival.â
In addition to fan relationships, Rodney explains that the labelâs geographic diversity is another thing that makes Dreamville, and its attendant festival, stand out. The labelâs acts hail from all over the map: Atlanta, Chicago, L.A., D.C., North Carolina, NYC. âIt would be a lot easier,â he says, âif we represented just a sound or a place. But itâs not that. Weâve got all these different stories, and that makes us special.â
âWe're not like other companies that are based in a city,â Hamad agrees. âOur label is very much an idea, more so than an actual physical place. So you can create it and take it everywhere. To bring that into the festivalâwhere you can just create a place and make it Dreamville and be able to bring people thereâwas always this cool goal. And that's what makes it unique. It's not based in an actual city. It's just based in our minds.â