When he spoke about his critically acclaimed album-turned-mixtape, Friday Night Lights, Cole acknowledges that “If we had the sense and the confidence, I would go back and smack myself like ‘Yo, don’t put out for free.’” Cole openly expresses the frustrations he felt as a new artist who had spent months touring and recording without an official album release date from his label.
Still, his increased net worth came at a steep learning curve. In addition to raking in six-figures per show, the special also gave him a platform to expose the Dreamville team’s merchandise. In 2015, Cole graced the FORBES Cash Kings list with recorded earnings of $11 million.
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Being that he has been signed to Jay-Z for over half a decade, it’s safe to say that he has picked up some business advice on how to be authentic and profitable. The HBO special also allowed Cole to capitalize on his biggest release to date. At the end of the day, it’s still a business.His lyrical vulnerability and willingness to literally open up his home created a cult-like following with his fans, and spawned a barrage of compliments from Rihanna following his last Dollar and a Dream show in Los Angeles. Instead of a simple pre-release album stream to satisfy his biggest fans, Cole opens up his childhood home in Fayetteville, North Carolina for them to walk through as they individually experience the unreleased album via Beats headphones.ĭuring the course of his career, Cole maintained his down-to-earth image and never shied away from the fact that he owed a large amount in student loans, or that shortly after signing his deal he drove himself to his performances in a Honda Civic. In Episode 2, Cole stretches the concept of fan appreciation and exclusivity.
“ whole style was ‘this is what we know: sign an artist, put him in the studio, when we feel like he has the single then spend money at radio, sell the album and see what happens.” “This new model that exists now of dropping out of the blue, building their own buzz…that didn’t exist back then,” Cole says in Episode 3. Normally a pre-release checklist of no lead singles, guest features, or marketing plan doesn’t meet the requirements for a platinum selling album. Formal marketing plans aren’t always applicable.Though the groups of tour mates are seen cracking jokes in their off time, they make a habit of over-communicating with each other when show time nears. Childhood friend turned stage manager, Cedric Brown, executes the technical arrangements for each tour date, including the star-studded live performance that features Drake and Jay Z in the final episode. To add to his resume, he also serves as the president of their 2007-established entity, Dreamville Records, and shared responsibility for the label’s partnership with Interscope Records.Ĭole further proves that he can hire friends who knew his government name before his stage name. In a recent interview with Rap Radar, Hamad states that at the time the two were in school together he was “just doing whatever I could do to help out.I was like ‘Yo, you’re dope.let me at least start playing this for people’ and then we went from there and put a mixtape together.”įrom lending an ear to last-minute recordings, to executing the annual Dollar and a Dream tours (a string of live performances offered to fans for $1 on a first-come-first-serve basis), Hamad is the reason that Cole can worry less about day-to-day logistics. It was by a semi-accident that Hamad learned of Cole’s passion for rapping. You can run a business with your friendsįriend-turned-manager, Ibrahim Hamad, met J.The tour induced multiple sellouts, including the 18,000-capacity Madison Square Garden, and grossed over $16 million from July to September, according to Billboard. Fast forward five years, and the Forest Hills Drive tour sold approximately 565,000-575,000 tickets according to Cole’s booking agent, Rob Gibbs.