Dreamville came back to Raleigh this year and had record audience numbers over 100,000 people were in attendance.
Dreamville Music Festival brings talented musicians, with roughly 50,000 fans to follow per day, each year.
Hosted by hip-hop star J. Cole, Dreamville is an outdoor celebration of music featuring live performances, local vendors, muralists, and a novelty Ferris wheel.
The music highlights throughout Dreamville are generally rap, R&B, and pop music, bringing a unique set of genres to music festivals that focus mainly on pop.
The entire event overtook Dorothea Dix Park, which is the largest park in Raleigh, with 308 acres of open space.
This festival has been taking place in Raleigh since 2019, and in 2022, it was expanded to a two-day event encompassing an entire weekend.
Dreamville inspired many Raleigh citizens, including many students at William Peace University, to explore local arts and culture by going to the festival.
Dreamville Pros and Cons
By Lillian Lewis
Since 2018 Dreamville has been an annual music festival hosted in Raleigh by Fayetteville native J. Cole. But is the experience worth the cost?
This year, several Peace Times reporters were able to attend the festival for the first time. This year there were over 104,000 people in attendance over two days.
Like anything, there are pros and cons. We took the liberty of making a list so that Pacers next year have an insight into how the festival works and what to expect.
Pros
- One of the biggest pros was having easy access to necessities like water, a bathroom, and even free electrolytes. From personal experience, I’ve seen someone pass out from exhaustion at almost every concert I’ve been to in the past two years. However, it seemed Dreamville went the extra mile to make sure that didn’t happen. They also had Narcan on site. Narcan is a nasal spray that can temporarily reverse the effects of certain drugs such as heroin, morphine, Oxycodone, Methadone, and Fentanyl. Better safe than sorry.
- For 52.000 people being in a small space, it was very clean! There wasn’t a lot of trash thrown on the ground or spilled drinks. Even the bathrooms for the most part were clean. Kudos to the Dreamville cleaning staff and attendees for being respectful!
- Need assistance? It’s all good Dreamville is pretty ADA friendly. I can’t speak for other large music festivals (Coachella, Lollapalooza) since I have never attended, but I can say a lot of outside venues are not accommodated for people who may need accommodations unless you buy that ticket, of which there are usually few. Dreamville had multiple viewing sections for people who needed accommodations.
Cons
- An important con was the lack of cell service during the event. Because of the large crowds, most people had little to no cell service the entire time which is a good way to disconnect and watch the show. But when situations came like calling an Uber or losing a friend in the crowd it was hard for everyone.
- One of the major cons was that all of the “cool” things you may see about Dreamville are only for VIP ticket holders. That may be expected, but when an average VIP ticket costs about as much as housing at William Peace University, it seems that the average person will never experience the club lounges or extra perks unless they take out a loan.
- Prices were also a little high for some products. Many of the vendors were small businesses, so it was expected for the prices to be high, but it still hurt the bank a little. Merchandise and drinks were more than the average price would pay but that’s also at any concert. Don’t ask me how much my concert merchandise cost…
Overall
Dreamville was a unique experience. Everything has some flaws but if we had to choose we’d go back. It was great to see people from all around the world celebrate artists in Raleigh when events like this typically happen in cities like Los Angeles. The variety of musicians, positive environment