J. Cole is aiming big things for his Dreamville imprint now that he has a concrete label deal with Interscope Records, which he announced on his 29th birthday on January 28th, just before his show at Theater at Madison Square Garden.
Jermaine spoke in detail about the deal with Billboard and why he chose to go with Jimmy Iovine’s label over others, revealing that Joie Manda, Interscope president of urban music wanted him to become “a Dre to his Jimmy Iovine.“
“We’ve been dreaming about a label situation for years,” Cole told Billboard over the phone a few days after the announcement. “The deal’s been official since late December, and we’d been working on it for a while before that, but it felt too important to just go out and yell it right when it happened. It needed a more grand announcement. “I thought he wanted me to produce someone over there and I was excited about that, but then he told me that he really believed in me as an executive, a label CEO and a producer. A Dr. Dre to his Jimmy Iovine. He had the vision.”
“They had a monster two years — I’m coming in at the right time. It’s a well-oiled machine,” Cole said. “When they believe in something, they show it. They pull out all the stops. Every artist wants that kind of power, and if I can utilize that, it’s game over. Jimmy Iovine told me that no one turns a spark into a flame like Interscope, and that’s what made me choose them.”
Omen, K-Quick and Bas are his Dreamville members but only Bas has been officially signed with Interscope yet who will release the first official project Last Winter on March 6.
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