Stone Mecca with his B.C. Rich in Austin, 2019
PHOTO BY RICK KERN/GETTY IMAGES
WHILE GUITAR ISN’T often associated with hip-hop music, for Stone Mecca, changing that narrative has been a critical element to a career spent flipping the script. Dating back to the Nineties, Mecca has appeared on albums by Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Wu-Tang Clan and RZA, becoming a go-to session player whenever the best of what the West Coast had to offer needed six-strings added into the mix.
Steeped in hip-hop as he is, it was rock music that first caught Mecca’s ear. “I loved rock,” he says. “But I always listened to hip-hop, too. And then, after I learned to play guitar, I got to do a session with Ice Cube, and that’s when the whole hip-hop guitar thing out on the West Coast kicked off for me.”