Go Behind the Scenes with J. Cole and Dreamville Records Making Revenge Of The Dreamers III

Rapper J. Cole is gearing up for the release of his compilation album Revenge of the Dreamers III, and to celebrate the forthcoming album, Dreamville Records released a behind-the-scenes documentary about the intensely collaborative process behind its creation.

Titled Revenge, the half-hour documentary sees a slew of guest rappers, singers, producers and more joining Cole at Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta. In somewhat of a golden ticket moment, Cole sent out invitations to a group of individuals in the rap industry to come and collaborate on music in hopes of getting a spot on the album.

“My whole career I’ve been fucking in a room with me, and at most a select few people that I fuck with,” Cole explains in the doc. “I’m reaching a point in my career, over this past year, I’m like ‘bruh I don’t want to look back 20 years from now, and be like yo, I never worked with nobody, I never had no fun.’”

Some of the individuals invited include Saba, Swizz Beatz, Vince Staples, Ari Lennox, Kenny Beats and more. Other big-time artists who came to the studio included Ludacris, Rick Ross and T.I., as well as the rest of the Dreamville Records roster. Once the word was out, more and more artists seemed to want to join in on the mysterious project and a sense of competition grew over the 10 days of recording at Tree Sound.

“To me it did a couple things. One, it created competition in a good way. It made people feel like ‘shit, when I get my chance I gotta show out,’” Ibrahim Hamad, co-founder and president of Dreamville, adds. “And two, I think it made certain people have to break out of their shell. Like if you don’t force the issue or start writing, or man like, ‘let me lay that down,’ you know it’s easy to get lost.”

The forthcoming compilation album is a follow-up to Dreamville’s 2015 release Revenge Of The Dreamers II. Dreamville previously released some of the forthcoming album’s tracks to gear listeners up for the release. “Down Bad” features Cole, JID, Bas, EARTHGANG and Young Nudy; “Got Me” features the likes of Ari Lennox, Omen, Ty Dolla $ign and Dreezy; “Costa Rica” includes Bas, JID, Guapdad 4000, Reese LAFLARE, Jace, Mez, Smokepurpp, Buddy and Ski Mask The Slump God; and the final single, “LamboTruck,” includes Cozz, REASON and Childish Major.

The album is expected to be released July 5, but for now, watch the behind-the-scenes documentary, Revenge, from Dreamville below. You can also listen to the four singles from Revenge Of The Dreamers III further down.