This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal, we traveled to Los Angeles for an epic sit down with J. Cole's manager and Dreamville president Ib Hamad! Ib talks about moving to Queens from Paris, the second youngest of five children, with English his third language, finding his voice on the New York City basketball courts. We discuss coaching youth basketball, studying SportsCenter highlights each morning, fleeting thoughts of playing Division 1 college basketball, but ultimately ending up at St. Johns where he'd chase girls and befriend future multi-platinum rapper Jermaine Cole, who at that point barely admitted that he had rhymes. Ib goes through the early days, supporting his friend's musical ambitions at open mics, getting jobs together at call centers, knowing that they had album-ready songs, and eventually capturing the interest of the music industry: meetings with 50 Cent, Shady Records' Paul Rosenberg, and of course, Mark Pitts and Jay-Z. Ib takes us through how the "Dollar and a Dream" campaign started, how Dreamville started, the power of Cole's mixtapes, the many starts and stops Cole's early major label career went through, acting as a push-button DJ for Cole, the differences between the first and second albums, what the HBO series meant, and how exactly 2014 Forest Hills Drive came to be. All that plus stories about JID and Earth Gang, Bas and Cozz, why Interscope was the perfect label partner, who's nicer on the court between Cole and Ib, and much, much more!

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