J. Cole has let the world know details about the 2025 edition of his annual Dreamville Festival — and fans can now mark off dates on their calendar and get their travel plans ready.
On Tuesday (November 26), the rapper revealed that the fifth iteration of the fest would again be at the place it began: Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, North Carolina, not far from Cole’s hometown of Fayetteville. The dates are April 5 and 6, 2025.
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No acts have been announced yet for the two-day event.
A presale for tickets starts on December 11 at 9 AM Eastern. As a press release explains, “two-day GA, GA+, and various VIP packages” will be the only options on sale at that point. Fans can sign up to access the presale by visiting dreamvillefest.com.
The Dreamville Festival reveal isn’t the only big announcement Cole has made lately. He also shared previously unreleased collaborations with Kendrick Lamar called “Temptation” and “Shock the World.”
As part of his recently launched audio series Inevitable, in which Cole reflects on his past albums and mixtapes, the Dreamville rapper played the two songs he made with Kendrick in 2010.
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During the episode, Cole described “Temptation” as “insane” and recalled sending beats to K.Dot when they were both rising rappers.
“Shock the World” also features vocals from BJ The Chicago Kid.
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Describing meeting Kendrick, Cole said: “It was early 2010 in L.A. at a U-N-I release party […] I remember seeing him on stage and he spit a verse, and I was like, ‘Yo, this n-gga right here is nice!’
“So he got off stage and I let him know like, ‘Bro, I fuck with you. You hard as fuck.’ He was like, ‘Yo, I met you! I was at the [2010] XXL Freshmen cover shoot [with Jay Rock].’”
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He added: “So we stayed in touch every now and then, and he sent me some joints. When I dropped ‘Blow Up,’ I remember him hitting me like, ‘N-gga, I need one of those!’ He was talking about how crazy the beat was.
“When I was out in L.A., he came by No ID‘s studio and I linked with him […] I played him the beat for ‘HiiiPoWeR,’ I played him ‘Temptation’ with my verse on it, I played him a couple of other joints that had one verse on it.
“When I played them for him, I was like, ‘Bro, you can have these if you want.’ I remember he said — and it always stuck with me ’cause I had never heard nobody say this to me before — he was looking at me like, ‘N-gga, are you sure you want to give me these?!’
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, go ahead, take them.’ He was like, ‘Bro, you sleeping on yourself.’ It struck me because it was actually the stone cold truth of my reality at that time. I was so focused on getting this unicorn hit for my album that I was actually sleeping on the shit that I did well.”
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Cole did not reveal what project(s) the songs were originally planned for or why they were never officially released. Both tracks were previously performed by Kendrick during an in-store appearance around 2011 or 2012.
It is not yet known if Cole will upload “Temptation” and “Shock the World” on streaming services, as he’s done with mixtapes The Come Up and The Warm Up in recent days.
