Tucson rapper lands on major indie label

Stacc Styles used to spend hours at Zia Records as a teen searching through stacks of vinyls for hip-hop records from Tucson artists and rappers he had never heard of.

Many of those unknowns were on Suburban Noize Records, a behemoth independent out of Los Angeles that was home to Kottonmouth Kings, Hed P.E., King Spade, Saigon and Mesa punk rockers Authority Zero.

“It was always my dream to be a part of that record label,” said the Amphitheater High School alumnus, whose real name is Aaron Tacker.

Late last October, the dream came true.

Styles’ Suburban Noize debut “Live Your Best Life” is set for an early summer release.

He is the first Tucson rapper signed to Suburban Noize, whose roster also includes Dropout Kings, Long Beach Dub Allstars, OPM and Salty Brasi. The move puts Styles on a trajectory to take his brand of high-energy chopper-style rap to a national audience.

“This label is the next step to the next level; it’s a major independent label,” he said during a late January phone call as he was making his way from a tour stop in Billings, Montana, to Great Falls. “This definitely puts me up there with the big boys and the major players in the industry.”

Signing with Suburban Noize comes nearly 20 years after Styles quit his day job delivering pizza in Tucson and focused on music full time.

Styles, who was born in Houston, Texas, and lived in California and New Mexico before his family moved to Tucson in 1994, specializes in the fast-paced speed rhyming style that was born in the Midwest and popularized by artists including Eminem, Twista and Tech N9ne.

“They call me the Southwest Chopper. When it comes to the speed and velocity, that’s what I bring to the table,” said Styles, who said he soon plans to challenge Eminem’s fastest rapper world record of 7.5 words per second. He said he recently clocked himself at 10 to 13 words per second.

“It’s pretty impressive how fast I can go,” he said.

Even more impressive is the fact that when he was a kid, Styles, 39, stuttered to the point that he could barely get out a sentence. He credits music with helping him to overcome it; he would go to sleep listening to cassette tapes of the “Blues Brothers” soundtrack, Beastie Boys or the R&B duo Sam & Dave.

“I really think that listening to those tapes and falling to sleep to those songs really helped with my speech,” he recalled.

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Doing musical musical theater as a kid taught him to memorize lines and lyrics, which boosted his stage confidence when he began rapping with a few buddies who called themselves the CCS Crew.

“We were downloading beats off of Napster back in the day and we would play them on an Aiwa boom box and we would rap on a Radio Shack mic and that’s really how we started freestyling,” he recalled.

Friends in Tucson’s hip-hop community introduced them to Tucson rappers including James Ciphurphace and The Runt from Jivin’ Scientists. The crew started doing shows at Vaudeville on East Congress Street with Black One (aka Jaron Ikner) and met Ryan Lameyer of Phenomenon Concerts, which books local artist showcase events at the Rialto and other Tucson venues.

“He was the one who gave us our first shot, including putting us on a show with Hed P.E. and King Spade,” said Styles, whose stage name reflects his diverse musical influences, from classic rock and soul to R&B and hip-hop. “That led us to opening for Tech N9ne.”

CCS went on to do a dozen shows with Tech N9ne as well as opening shows for Nas and Ice Cube. Soon after high school, they landed a record deal with the Canadian label Seizure Productions, which went bust six months after Styles and the crew relocated to Canada. The group came home to Tucson and continued playing the handful of local clubs that hosted rap and hip-hop, including The Rock, Club Congress, Mr. Heads and the Rialto.

In 2005, Styles, determined to land at Suburban Noize, went on tour as a roadie with the hardcore/punk jazz band Mower. The band was impressed enough with Styles’s style that they introduced him to Suburban Noize owner Kevin Zinger. The connections led to tour invites from other Suburban Noize artists including landing on the label’s 2020 Henchlord Tour with Chucky Chuck and the 2022 Underground Alliance Tour, where he met DJ Swamp. He and the award-winning Swamp, who spent four years touring with Beck, recorded a project together that they shopped to Suburban Noize last year.

The label liked it so much that they signed Styles.

“I’m still trying to soak it all in,” he said. “It really is a dream come true.”

Styles left Tucson in 2021, but he said Tucson has never left him.

“It’s really cool to come out of Tucson, Arizona, and really represent Tucson to the fullest. I still rep Tucson all day, every day, no matter what,” he said. “It’s really cool to be signed to a major independent label and to be from Tucson. To me, that’s gold.”