Music in his blood.

Eddie Cole has music in his blood. As the great-nephew of Nat King Cole, he grew up inside the family business: his father, Edward Cole, spent years as Natalie Cole's musical director, and his mother, Laura Cole, a classically trained music major, had him at the piano by the age of three. Jamming with cousin Natalie Cole's son Robbie pulled him toward the drums, and his parents together shaped the instrument that would set him apart... his voice.

Sixteen and signed

He was sixteen when his professional career began, as one quarter of the gospel group 4th Elemynt, signed by Tonex to Tommy Boy Records and touring the world behind their 1999 debut. By 2002 he was singing background and sitting in on drums for Kenny Lattimore and Chante Moore, and before long he was producing and arranging vocals on two of Lattimore's albums. The next chapter took him to Osaka, Japan, where he lived on and off for almost three years performing, writing, and producing for Universal Studios Japan and Tokyo Disney, arranging the music for four of the five shows he appeared in. It was the first time Eddie was responsible for other singers' performances, and it would not be the last.

Long Beach to Broadway

Back in Long Beach in 2009, he took over as frontman of the band Mulatto, and a year later became music director and vocal arranger of Man In The Mirror, a Michael Jackson tribute that opened in Myrtle Beach, grew wings, toured the world, and settled into a three-week residency in Monte Carlo, with the whole process filmed for the UK series Dancing King. The band renamed itself Z and released Arize in 2011, still one of the most inventive independent records to come out of Long Beach. That same year Eddie and the band joined The Illusionists, where he became co-music director and scored the show with his writing partner. It opened at the Sydney Opera House, played the West End, every major Australian city, New Zealand, Dubai, and across the United States, appeared twice on America's Got Talent, and landed on Broadway in 2014 at the Marquis Theatre, breaking box-office records and returning for an encore run at the Neil Simon Theatre in 2015.

Fifteen years with Nas

While all of that was being built, Eddie also joined the band of Queens hip-hop icon Nas as electronic percussionist and vocalist, and somehow the two tours never collided. He played the Life Is Good/Black Rage tour alongside Ms. Lauryn Hill, and when Nas pared his live show down to two people, it was DJ Green Lantern and Eddie on drums, electronic percussion, and vocals. Fifteen years on from that 2011 start he is still there, as drummer, vocalist, and co-musical director, with Coachella, the Hollywood Bowl, the Late Show with David Letterman, and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert among the stops, and a producer credit on Nas's "Jarreau of Rap (Skatt Attack)" to show for it. The orchestra stage became its own lane: dozens of symphonic Illmatic performances with Nas, and in February 2022 a solo turn with the Nashville Symphony in "Disco Fever: Get Down Tonight" at the invitation of principal pops conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez. In 2014 he also joined Swedish artist Mapei as drummer and co-music director for more than a year of international touring, Letterman, and Skavlan, and later went out as music director for Alina Baraz and Galimatias.

His own records

The road is where his own records were written. Godspeed, his first solo EP, arrived in the summer of 2014. Inertia: The Art of Motion followed in 2015: a thirty-plus track, three-tiered listening experience he wrote, composed, mixed, and produced on live instrumentation, with string arrangements by Nick DePinna and guests including Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi of Knower and DJ Green Lantern. He released every acapella and instrumental alongside it, an open invitation into his process that few artists have the technical ability to extend. Along the way he signed with BMG as a writer and producer for film, television, and commercial sync.

Mad Apple

In 2022 Cirque du Soleil was building a new show for Las Vegas, and Eddie was in the room before it had a name. Under the stage name Xharlie Black he became the Music Director and Vocal Arranger of Mad Apple, selecting the songs that gave the show its New York identity, arranging every vocal for its five singers, producing its transitions, and coaching the cast into the performers audiences saw night after night. Then came the part nobody had planned for: he grew into hosting the show and singing lead in it. "A living and breathing organism of music," he called it. On September 5, 2026, after four years, more than 2,000 performances, and 1.2 million tickets, Mad Apple took its final bow. "I say this with my whole chest," Eddie told the last audience. "This show is my baby."

What's next

Next comes Forever, his take on Little Dragon's song of the same name, the first release of a new chapter under his own name.