Tyler Cole traces journey from East Lansing to Billboard charts

From recording a double-platinum song with Willow Smith to producing an album for Weezer and securing a lead writing role on a Spike Lee film, Tyler Cole’s career has taken him to places most artists can only dream of.

All the while, the 28-year-old Los Angeles-based artist hasn’t forgotten his roots. Although he was born in Orlando, Florida, he moved with his mother, Heidi Vogl, to her native East Lansing as an infant to be closer to family. He attended Glencairn Elementary School before moving to LA with Vogl in 2003.

“I have great memories of Lansing. I feel like it was one of those places that was always really dear to me, close to home and shaped the way I looked at the world,” Cole said.

After moving to California, Cole would return to Michigan in the summers to stay with his grandmother. He’d split that time between East Lansing and Traverse City, where he also has family, but he recalls East Lansing with a particular fondness.

“I remember going to Michigan State University games at the Breslin Center and even saw the Harlem Globetrotters there one year, so I have a lot of memories of being a Spartans fan during that time and still am to this day,” Cole said.

He was attending a performing arts middle school in LA when he discovered his first formal creative outlet in theater.

Willow Smith and Tyler Cole performing their double-platinum song, “Meet Me at Our Spot,” in 2021.

“It just seemed like the thing to do out here, and I kind of fell in love with performing and being someone that you’re not on stage,” he said. “After a year or two of that, I found the guitar and started teaching myself how to play on YouTube.”

Years later, a friend gave him a copy of Ableton, a music production software. He began making beats and expanded his social circle to include other young artists in the area who shared his passion.

“Eventually, I met some like-minded people who liked the stuff that I was doing, and we turned it into something a little bit more real,” he said.

That group included Willow Smith, the daughter of actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.

“I produced a couple of projects for her, but we would also make songs on our own just for fun. That turned into this band called The Anxiety, and our album came out on March 13, 2020, which was the exact same day the pandemic started,” Cole said.

To promote the record, the day before its release, Cole and Smith spent 24 hours locked in a 20-foot glass box at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary.

“We had no idea that the pandemic was coming, so the ironic thing is that it really felt like art imitating life. Some people were debating whether or not to take us out of the thing, but we were already isolated. By the time we got out, the world had already changed,” Cole said.

It would be another year before one of the album’s songs, “Meet Me at Our Spot,” would go viral on TikTok. It went on to reach double-platinum status in the U.S. and climbed to the 21st spot on the Billboard Hot 100.

“I didn’t know it blew up right away. At the time, Willow and I had another song that was doing well called ‘Transparent Soul,’ which I produced and featured Travis Barker from Blink-182 on,” Cole said. “So, I was already working on other music that I was really excited about when people started telling me the song was trending and spreading everywhere. It was a shock, but it became my biggest song and still is to this day. It was really cool to see how far music can travel, even if it’s something you made for fun.”

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was on a morning walk in late 2021 when the song appeared on one of his playlists. 

“I got a call one day, and the caller ID said, ‘Maybe Rivers Cuomo.’ I thought someone was playing a joke on me,” Cole said. “He asked me if I was interested in producing for them. I said, ‘a hundred million percent’ because Weezer was one of my favorite bands growing up and influenced a lot of the stuff that I was doing.”

Weezer released the “SZNZ: Autumn” EP in September 2022, with Cole credited as a producer.

“It was kind of a full-circle moment for me. It was really cool for him to come to me with ideas and ask me to help shape them while putting my own personal touch on what we were doing,” Cole said.

Cole noted his ability to draw from a variety of genres as an artist and producer spawned from a lifetime of developing his own diverse musical tastes.

“Growing up, I listened to all sorts of rock music, from classic rock to psychedelic and metal.  I also listened to all sorts of R&B, like Usher and Justin Timberlake, and rappers like 50 Cent and Jay-Z,” he said. “The guitar was really the foundation of my music, but I was always looking for a way to combine everything. I think the best way to describe my sound to people — because there’s not really a term for all these things in one — the word ‘alternative’ usually comes up because it’s the alternative to what’s normal.”

Cole shares this multifaceted approach with some of his biggest inspirations, including Donald Glover, Justin Vernon and Frank Ocean.

While it would be a dream for Cole to work with any of them, he said he has a special affinity for Glover, whose diverse career includes five Grammy wins under the stage name Childish Gambino, plus two Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for his work as a producer, writer and actor on his television show, “Atlanta,” which ran from 2016 to 2022.

“I’ve always looked at him as someone who does all the things I want to do,” Cole said of Glover. “He showed me that it’s possible to do all these things at once but not do any one better than the other. I feel like that’s the closest thing to what I’m trying to do with my career.”

Cole took a page out of Glover’s book last year when Amazon MGM Studios picked up a film script he wrote and tapped Spike Lee to direct it. Titled “Da Understudy,” the project is in pre-production.

“I can’t really speak too much on the process at this point, but I can say that Spike Lee was one of my favorite filmmakers when I was a kid. So, it was really important to me to have this relationship with him and have him as a mentor,” Cole said.

Cole is also preparing to drop his latest album, “Existential Crisis Boy (Part 2),” in September. Listeners can expect more of his signature R&B- and soul-infused indie and pop sounds, though he’s never been one to stick to any particular formula.

Though he’s kept busy, Cole hasn’t forgotten about Lansing, where his grandmother and half-siblings live.

“I’ll always have love for my hometown,” he said, adding that he’s looking to do a show in the area “in the near future.”

“I also have a film project I’m potentially looking to shoot in Lansing. It will hopefully be sooner rather than later for this particular thing,” he said. “I’d love to bring a little bit of my own energy to Lansing’s creative scene and help spread the word of the city.”