Keyshia Cole

CTL-E-5729 · Person · musician · 1981–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07001 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5729.

Keyshia Cole, born Keyshia Myeshia Cole (née Johnson) on 15 October 1981 in Oakland, California, is an American R&B singer dubbed the "Princess of Hip-Hop Soul." Adopted at age two by Leon and Yvonne Cole, she sang backing vocals for MC Hammer as an Oakland youth before relocating to Los Angeles and signing with A&M Records. Her debut The Way It Is (2005) carried "I Should Have Cheated" and "Love" and anchored the BET reality series Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is (2006–08). Just Like You (2007) debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, went platinum, and produced three No. 1 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop singles — "Let It Go," "I Remember" and "Heaven Sent" — earning four Grammy nominations. Her catalogue continues through 11:11 Reset (2017), and she toured North America and the UK in 2025 on The Way It Is 20th Anniversary Tour.

The record

• Also known as: Keyshia Myeshia Cole, Keyshia Johnson

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Census Intake Wave 1 — 747 Program, Wave 7; first packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Keyshia Cole entity in the live graph at 3,443 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5729 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 3 — Famous Birthdays ABSENT census, readiness rank 202 (R&B Singers list). The census supplied the NAME ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Black American R&B figure. Vital status: LIVING — The Way It Is 20th Anniversary Tour ran July–September 2025. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Just Like You debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and is RIAA platinum, with three No. 1 Hot R&B/Hip-Hop singles and four Grammy nominations in its cycle — RACC Trusted, accessed 2026-10-16. The Way It Is sales are reported as "over one million" (Wikipedia) and 1.6 million (Last.fm biography) — both shown, not blended. MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: Wikimedia Commons and label/press photography of this subject exists; no file page was read at file-page level in this pass, so no image is cleared — CTL-PHOTO-001; a CTL-created graphic is the standing alternative); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5729-keyshia-cole.svg); video HELD (the Shorts Link Map catalog was checked by name and variants — no matching-entity CTL Short exists for this subject; the three catalog string-hits for "Ne-Yo" resolve to Nina Simone and John Coltrane rows, not Ne-Yo billings); audio HELD (no CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio; the subject's recordings are third-party copyrighted material). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging; the subject's own recordings are third-party )

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Keyshia Cole" — born 15 October 1981, Oakland; adoption and name; A&M debut (2005); BET series — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyshia_Cole (build store)
• RACC Trusted biography — Just Like You platinum; three No. 1 R&B singles; four Grammy nominations — https://www.racctrusted.com/c/keyshia-cole/biography/ (primary source · build store)

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Record CTL-E-5729 · Combined Graph record U-07001 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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