Photo Courtesy: Brittany McCray
This past weekend Dallas was the first stop with a $1 show by none other than J. Cole for his Dollar & A Dream tour. Posting on Twitter that he would be at The House of Blues for only $1. Yeah, you read that right. ONE DOLLAR.
As soon as fans found out the time and location, they flocked to The House of Blues in Dallas. As well-known as J. Cole is tickets sold out fast, leaving a lot of people salty. But hey, who wouldn’t be? $1 to see J. Cole, I knew I wouldn’t get to it having read the tweet while in Denton.
Some argue this wasn’t a smart move on J. Cole’s part, being the big name he is, they claim his announcement nearly enticed a riot; my reply: “but did you die?”. Yes, police, who had no advanced warning of the show, were called about people fighting and jumping on parked cars, but that hardly qualifies as a riot considering how many sports team “celebrations” end up in hundreds, or thousands, of dollars in damages and usually with several people in jail. J. Cole put on an awesome show, and the first 1,600 people to show up at The House of Blues with $1 got to see it. J. Cole even told people to be safe in his original tweet because lets face it, $1 venue shows sell out crazy fast and tend to leave crowds of hopeful fans disappointed and locked outside. This was just a case of frantic fans, like any other musical act would have after waves of fans came to see them for $1.
J. Cole has always shown love for his fans, like in 2014 when he preformed at University North Texas (UNT) in Denton. Only a certain number of people could get wrist bands to be right in front of the stage, but they underestimated the room to fan ratio, leaving more than enough open room on the floor of the auditorium. A confused J. Cole told the crowd to fill in the void and come up close, but police enforced the wristband rule that UNT oddly thought okay to make, keeping many fans in their seats far from the stage.
Pop up concerts are usually known to have an exclusive and intimate setting, usually audiences of 2,000 people or less, making it an incredible musical experience and a feat not a lot of artists accomplish these days, in this writers opinion.
