Busta Rhymes performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

The music’s over for the third annual 2025 Prudential North to Shore festival after Newark native George Clinton and his band Parliament Funkadelic capped this year’s two-week series of concerts, comedy shows and art exhibits up and down the Jersey Shore on Sunday night at one of the state’s most storied venues, The Stone Pony in Asbury Park.

Final numbers aren’t in, but organizers say this year’s festival drew over 200,000 attendees to more than 150 events from June 14 to 29 in the waterfront cities of Newark, Asbury Park and Atlantic City, and locations in between.

More than a dozen events billed as part of Prudential North to Shore are still to come, extending beyond the two weeks of the festival proper into the fall and even the new year.

Plies performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

They include the Atlantic City Latino Festival on Sept. 6 and an Oct. 3 Garden State Live show featuring rockers Destinee Monroe, Red, and The Grip Weeds at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Starting Jan. 17, Gin Ricky’s Live Music Bar at the Tropicana Casino Hotel will host a monthly jazz and R&B night through May 15.

That preliminary attendance figure is lower than the 270,000 attendees for the 2024 festival, in part because of a shift this year away from a concentration in Atlantic City shows early on and instead spreading them into the fall and winter, said John Schreiber, CEO of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Newark-based nonprofit arts institution that produced the festival.

Rakim performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

Gov. Phil Murphy and First Lady Tammy Murphy conceived the festival, which launched in 2023 as a showcase for music, poetry, theater and visual arts.

But this year’s biggest crowds turned out for laughs, with big-name comics headlining the festival for the first time. “For example, last weekend in Newark, we had Jon Stewart, John Mulaney and Pete Davidson at Prudential arena," Schreiber said of Friday night’s triple bill. “We had 14,500 people for that.”

Tina Fey & Amy Poehler made a stop on their Restless Leg Tour billed under the N2S umbrella on June 22, also at the Rock, where the comic duo drew more than 10,000 fans, said David Rodriguez, executive producer of NJPAC and the North to Shore festival, known as N2S for short.

Reflecting on the festival’s commitment to diversity, writer and actor Kumail Nanjiani, who grew up in Pakistan, returned to his standup roots at NJPAC on June 21, one night after Sherri Shepherd and Kim Whitley appeared as Two Funny Mamas.

Fabolous performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

Apart from comic headliners, Rodriguez said a new dimension to this year’s festival on the music side was the incorporation of smaller but established music festivals focused on particular genres.

Redman, Erick Sermon, and K Solo performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

They included LL Cool J’s Rock the Bells Festival, an evening-long hip-hop gathering at Prudential Center on Saturday night featuring Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Mo, Too $hort and others, which began in Southern California in 2003.

“The idea of adding in branded festivals, which would include Rock the Bells, Summer Jam, and the festival we did Saturday with Bleachers‚" said Rodriguez. “It’s being able to target a constituency based on an artist or a group of artists in the festival as a way to make one plus one equal three.”

Donell Jones performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

To make North to Shore’s financial math work out, the festival has relied on an annual contribution from the state that came to $3 million this year, or 20% of the total budget of $15 million, the organizers said.

State Property performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

Another $2.5 million came from corporate sponsors, including the Newark-based Prudential, United Airlines, Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Finlandia Vodka, and NJ.com’s Mosaic section, which amplifies underrepresented voices in New Jersey and celebrates the state’s diversity.

Funding for next year’s festival was included in the Fiscal Year 2025-2026 budget approved by the state Senate on Monday but at $2 million - $1 million less than this year’s appropriation.

The 2025-26 budget is the last one under the festival’s creator and principal patron, Murphy, a Democrat who will step down as governor after his second term expires in January.

LL Cool J performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

The campaign manager for Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciatterelli said that, if elected, the former state assemblyman from Somerset County would “review every dollar” Murphy had spent.

“In communities across the state of New Jersey, schools have been closed, extracurricular activities have been cut, and teachers have been laid off over less than $3 million,” campaign manager Eric Alpert said, referring to this year’s outlay.

Al B Sure performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

A spokesperson for the Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-11th District, declined to comment on Monday.

Rodriquez defended the festival as a sound investment of taxpayer dollars, citing benefits that include providing fun, artistic enrichment, a sense of community, and Jersey pride to audiences by showcasing Garden State artists, both established and up-and-coming.

Lil Mo performing at Rock The Bells Festival at Prudential Center

Rodriguez also cited research indicating that public spending on the arts has a multiplier effect, generating a net return in economic activity for every tax dollar spent.

Schreiber thanked lawmakers for the 2025-26 appropriation. He said it was too soon to determine the impact a $1 million funding cut would have on the prospects for a festival next year or what a change in administration might mean for the festival’s future.

“We’re grateful for the support of the state and our other sponsors,” Schreiber said. “And we’re optimistic that the festival will return again in the summer of 2026.”