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Star-Studded Lineups & Suprise Guests Dominate the Third Annual Dreamville Fest

Jordan Davis

RALEIGH, NC — Dreamville Records hosted its third annual Dreamville Fest on April 1 and April 2 at the historic Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, North Carolina and outlived the hype.

Back in 2019, North Carolina’s own J. Cole announced Dreamville Fest as an outdoor music festival that features local music, culture, food and a mix of up-and-comers and national acts. Despite the festival being canceled two years in a row during the COVID-19 pandemic, the star-studded fest came back in 2022 and added an extra day to its slate.

This year’s lineup did not disappoint fans of Dreamville or fans of Hip Hop in general. Ari Lennox, Earthgang, Omen and Lute represented the label on the first day while Cozz, Bas, JID and Cole showed out on the final day.

The overall vibes in Raleigh were immaculate all weekend long thanks in part to the bigger acts who showed up and rocked the stage. The ages of crowd goers spanned from as young as 12 years old up to 65 years old — all coming to see the diverse acts cast upon fans at the festival.

International R&B superstar Usher headlined all acts on Saturday and delivered one of if not the best sets of the entire weekend.

“I love J. Cole and Summer Walker’s music more than anyone who performed this weekend, but Usher by far had the best set of any artist,” concertgoer and North Carolina A&T State student Gabby Heyward says. “Him being able to sing at the pitches he was while also giving choreographed dances at the same time was impeccable — I’ve only seen Beyonce and Chris Brown do that.”

Usher performed a slew of his smash hits such as “U Don’t Have to Call”, “My Boo”, “Burn”, “Confessions, Pt. II”, “OMG”, and “Lovers and Friends” amongst plenty of others.

As is every year, there were two separate stages: the Rise stage and the Shine stage which served as the main stage for the headliners. Lil Durk performed on the Rise stage shortly before Usher took the stage and shut it down while performing hits such as “What Happened To Virgil”, “Who Want Smoke??” and “Back in Blood”.

Other than the Dreamville artists, City Girls, Sean Paul, North Carolina native Toosi (replacing Key Glock), Jesse Reyez, Marqus Clae, Victony and SiR also performed earlier in the day.

Saturday proved to be a teaser and a warm-up for the bigger performances slated for the next day with J. Cole and international recording superstar Drake co-headlining the Sunday show. Earlier in the day, Reuben Vincent, Jordan Ward, Baby Tate, Arya Starr, Waka Flocka and Mario all impressed concertgoers with their sets and have received constant praise over social media for their performances.

Most notably, Summer Walker and Burna Boy had electric performances which set the scene for Cole and Drake to piggyback off of. Walker had the ladies screaming her breakup hits such as “Playing Games”, “Girls Need Love” and “Over It” at the top of their lungs, word for word.
Walker’s set had the same group of people run from the Shine stage to the Rise stage to catch Burna Boy put on an epic performance for the first time in North Carolina.

The Nigerian-born singer-superstar rocked the Rise stage for over an hour, performing international smash hits “Last Last”, “Ye”, “For My Hand” and “Kilometre”. It was announced after hitting the Dreamville Fest stage that Burna Boy will be the first-ever Nigerian artist to headline a U.S. stadium when he performs at NYC’s Citi Field this summer.

Lastly, Dreamville founder J. Cole took the stage at approximately 9:18 p.m. ET and essentially opened up for Drake. Cole came out to one of his early singles, “Who Dat”, which he performed live for the first time since 2014. He followed that up with, “9 5 . s o u t h”, the intro of his most recent album release The Off-Season. This was followed by “m y . l i f e”, “a lot”, “A Tale of 2 Citiez” and “Power Trip” — the latter of which sent the crowd of over 100,000 people into a frenzy.

Cole cleaned through a plethora of other hits in the tuck such as “Planez”, “Wet Dreamz” and “Down Bad”, which he brought out every artist on the label for minus Ari Lennox. The Fayetteville native would close out his set with “Love Yourz” before setting up Drake to take over — and boy did he.

The Toronto-born superstar came out with a barrage of smoke and incandescent lights to his 2018 Billboard No. 1 hit, “SICKO MODE”, letting the crowd and the hundreds of thousands of people streaming live on Amazon Prime Video and Twitch that The Boy had finally arrived.

Thousands of phones remained out throughout the entirety of Drake’s set as he kept fans on their toes while performing songs from over 10 years ago. “My brother (Cole) asked me that if I was going to do this show could I take it back and perform some old songs for you all,” he told the audience shortly before he played his 2010 hit “Over”. He followed up the lead single to his debut album Thank Me Later with more nostalgic tunes in “Headlines”, “HYFR” and “Started From The Bottom” which kept the crowd engaged. The longer Drake’s set went on, it became crystal clear that this was who the people from different cities, states, and countries came to see.

“I think I’ve got to be Drake’s biggest fan and he rarely goes on a Worldwide tour so I took advantage of this opportunity and these prices to come here and see him,” Dominican Republic native Aryana Pérez told me before the performance. Pérez flew into North Carolina from Santiago just to see Drake co-headline the festival.

“I’ve laid in the same spot all day to be sure I’ll be able to get a good look at him. I’ve been a diehard fan ever since I heard “Best I Ever Had” on the radio in 2009.”

Fans of Drake know him from signing to Birdman’s Young Money/Cash Money imprint early on and appearing on a slew of collabs with his idol Lil Wayne. During his set, he brought out the man who he still refers to as his boss as a surprise guest while he performed “The Motto”. Drake left the crowd with Lil Wayne as he performed “Uproar” and “A Milli” and returned after to give him his flowers.

Drake also brought out Lil Uzi Vert to perform his hit song “Just Wanna Rock”, Glorilla to perform “FNF” and 21 Savage to perform songs from their collaborative album Her Loss. “Dreamville (Fest) I told you we can keep going if you want, I got brothers that do this. The boss is here now I don’t know what to tell you,” Drake told the crowd.

This marks the first time surprise guests appeared during Dreamville Fest’s headliner set since J. Cole brought out Meek Mill and 21 Savage at the inaugural show. Drake ended his set by bringing J. Cole back out on stage and had his DJ play Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” as a nod to Cole — which was sung beautifully by the audience. Cole closed out the festival with his fan-favorite song “No Role Modelz” as fireworks erupted after thanking the thousands in attendance for their support through the years and over the weekend.

Dreamville Festival exuded black excellence in its purest form. The culture was displayed to hundreds of thousands of people virtually as the fest has somewhat become the mecca of indie Hip Hop festivals nationwide. After this year, the festival has possibly etched its name into festival royalty with other fests such as Rolling Loud, Coachella, and Lollapalooza.

With one of the world’s biggest artists in Drake coming to perform in North Carolina for the first time in over seven years, people continue to wonder how next year’s Dreamville Festival can top this one. We’ll have to wait and see but as always, Spectacular magazine will have you covered on all news surrounding Dreamville Fest next year and for the future!