At Queen Bean Coffee House in Modesto, Surf Baby did not look like someone waiting for permission.
During a recent Saturday performance, the Weston Ranch-raised singer moved through her set with ease, talking to the crowd between songs and carrying herself with the kind of confidence that can make a room feel smaller, warmer, more responsive. She did not need a big production to hold attention; between tracks, she let the room breathe, spoke directly to the audience and pulled listeners back in before the next beat dropped.
The woman onstage did not seem shy. Days earlier, she had described herself that way.
Offstage, Surf Baby said, she is goofy, creative and a big sister, someone who can keep a little distance until she feels comfortable. But when the music starts, another part of her steps forward. Her voice firms up. Her presence widens. The hesitation falls away.
Known outside music as Tiara Nicole, Surf Baby’s family settled in Weston Ranch after moving from Hayward when she was about 3 or 4. Her music blends R&B, pop and hip-hop with a sound built around confidence, sensuality and self-belief.
“It’s a little bit of an alter ego, but it is fully me,” she said. “Some parts of myself I do feel more comfortable when I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m Surf Baby.’”
With two albums this year in February’s “Surf’s Up II” and “Surf’s Up III” on the way, Surf Baby is also trying to make a larger point about the city that shaped her: Stockton does not have to sound only one way.
The city’s music scene is often associated with harder rap sounds — trap, drill and the street narratives that have carried Stockton’s name beyond the city. Surf Baby does not reject that legacy. She wants to widen it.
“We have that sound,” she said. “But we also have different sounds that come out of Stockton that you might love as well.”
For Surf Baby, being different does not mean being less Stockton. When she talks about home, she starts with Weston Ranch.
“I represent the Ranch,” she said.
She remembers the neighborhood at a time when it was still filling in, as families from the Bay Area moved inland and built lives on the south side of the city. Before everyone had smartphones, she remembers getting on Facebook to tell friends she was walking to the Greenbelt, an open-space corridor running through Weston Ranch.
“I finna go to the Greenbelt,” she recalled. “I’m about to start walking right now.”
Then they would meet at the park.
The music came to her before the name. Tiara Nicole grew up singing and entertaining her family. Her mother played Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and jazz. She tried piano and flute, but neither instrument stayed with her for long. Choir did.
That was where singing felt natural.
The name Surf Baby arrived in 2016, while she was sitting on her bed and imagining herself as a rapper. At the time, she had been using Tiara Nicole for R&B music, but she wanted another name for another side of herself.
She liked the ocean. She liked nature. She thought about the rhythm of rap names she knew — Lil Wayne, Lil Baby — and tried different combinations until one finally sounded right.
“Baby Surf, I was like, nah, don’t go right,” she said. “And then I was like, OK, Surf Baby. Yeah, we gonna do that one.”
At first, the name was an experiment. Over time, it became a way to reach a bolder version of herself.
Her path as an independent artist began the way it has for many musicians of her generation: in a bedroom, on a computer and online. She released music on SoundCloud. During the pandemic, when studio access was limited, she turned to BandLab, a free music-making app that lets artists record, edit and layer songs from a phone or computer.
The platform made recording feel possible on her own terms.
“You could record your own self, you could engineer your own self,” she said.
Around 2021, music became something deeper than an outlet. While dealing with depression and the aftermath of what she described as an abusive relationship, Surf Baby began putting those feelings into songs. Releasing music was not yet about a polished career plan. It was a way to process what she was living through.
“I was putting all of that in the music,” she said.
Then people began responding. Listeners told her what the songs did for them, how they felt when they heard them and how they connected to what she was saying. Those messages changed the way she understood her own work.
“I was like, oh, OK,” she said. “So I’m actually moving people.”
That realization helped her take herself more seriously. So did a conversation she had on the way to the studio while working on “Surf’s Up II.”
In an Uber, the driver began asking her questions about being an artist. The conversation felt different, she said, almost spiritual. He spoke to her with the warmth of a father figure, encouraging her to focus, finish a project and believe in what she was doing.
“He was giving me advice as if he was a father figure,” she said. “I really appreciated that.”
By the time she arrived at the studio, she felt ready to work.
That energy helped shape “Surf’s Up II,” the project she considers her biggest and most structured release so far. Compared with the first “Surf’s Up,” which she described as more of an introduction, the second project had a clearer concept. She added skits, thought more intentionally about production and built a fuller story around the music.
The cover to “Surf’s Up II” shows Surf Baby partly submerged in water, only her eyes visible. To her, the image represents a gradual emergence — an artist becoming more open while still protecting parts of herself.
“I wanted that to represent me coming out of my shell and being more vulnerable,” she said. “But not all the way yet.”
That image will continue with “Surf’s Up III,” which Surf Baby said is finished and mixed. She expects to release the project in August, though she has not announced an exact date.
If the “Surf’s Up II” cover showed only her eyes above water, the next one shows more of her emerging.
The sound, she said, is more upbeat: party energy, late-night drives, sunroofs and summer ending slowly. It is still sensual, still rooted in confidence, but a little more open.
“More hype, more party energy,” she said. “It’s still in the sensual vibe.”
The songs she points listeners to — “Surf Delight,” “Don’t Make Me Wait” and “Pretty Brown Eyes” — occupy the world she has been building across the three “Surf’s Up” projects: soft but assured, romantic but not fragile, intimate without losing bounce. Listeners have compared her sound to music from the 1990s and early 2000s, a description she said she has come to understand through the feedback she receives.
At first, she did not know exactly how to name the sound.
“I didn’t know at first what my sound was and what direction I was going,” she said. “But from the feedback that I’ve been receiving so far, a lot of people will tell me ’90s or 2000s.”
The people who have worked with Surf Baby hear that growth in more specific ways.
At The Press Recording Studio, Diego Ayala has watched her develop from “the other side of the glass.” Ayala, who has worked at the studio for 10 years and began interning there in 2015, has worked with Surf Baby since 2019 and mixed and mastered her projects.
Her songwriting has improved since they first began working together, Ayala told Stocktonia. One of the parts of the process they both enjoy most is adding harmonies to certain sections of her songs.
“That’s how you know it’s a Surf Baby song, a lot of harmonies, especially on the last hook of a song,” Ayala said. “Paired with the production she’s singing over, Surf has really cultivated a sound I think a lot of her listeners come to expect now.”
The growth has been visible not only in the music, he said, but in the way Surf Baby carries herself as an artist.
“Really cool to see that kind of growth and confidence unfold from the other side of the glass,” Ayala said.
Producer Jaelyn Fleming, who goes by Jae Smoove, has also worked with Surf Baby since 2019. Fleming, who said he has been involved in music since childhood and began producing in fourth grade using GarageBand, worked with Surf Baby on “TOP PICK,” a 2024 single that Apple Music lists among her top songs.
Since then, her sound has continued to sharpen.
“Every song we do, the melody is gonna get stuck in your head,” Fleming said in a written response.
He described Surf Baby’s music as “smooth, laid back, and classy,” with an intimate, mellow quality that can relax listeners while still carrying bounce.
“You know a Surf Baby song when it’s got a catchy melody, smooth chords, and the beat got that bounce,” Fleming said.
That is the technical version of what Surf Baby describes emotionally. To her, the music is about feeling good in your own skin. She calls it “sexy music,” but she does not define that only through desire. It is about ease, control and being unashamed.
“Ain’t no shame,” she said. “No judgment.”
That matters in a music industry where women artists are often seen before they are heard. Part of the challenge, Surf Baby said, has been navigating men who focus first on her appearance rather than her work. She understands attraction is part of the world she works in, but she is clear about the line she wants respected.
“I am an artist first,” she said. “Take me serious on that.”
Before some listeners even press play, they already think they know what a Stockton artist sounds like, Surf Baby said. Her answer is not to separate herself from the city, but to show another version of it — one that is creative, vulnerable, romantic, spiritual and confident.
She wants to “shed a brighter light” on the place that raised her.
Building that career independently has meant learning the business as she goes. Surf Baby has worked with producers including K. Fisha, Jae Smoove, J Digital and Ofvsho. She also previously wrote music for sync licensing, studying the styles of artists such as Rihanna and Billie Eilish while working on songs intended for television and film.
One of those songs, “Dying,” credited under her legal name, Tierra Craft, was later placed in Season 2, Episode 1 of Netflix’s teen drama “Fate: The Winx Saga,” according to soundtrack listings. The episode, titled “Low-Flying Panic Attack,” was released Sept. 16, 2022. It was not the song she expected to travel the farthest.
“I did not like it,” she said, laughing. “I’m not gonna lie.”
Years later, when she got the call that it had been placed, the moment gave her another reason to believe the career she imagined was possible.
“I was like, ‘Oh shoot,’” she said. “‘This, I can do this.’”
These days, Surf Baby is independent, without a label or publisher behind her. That gives her more control, but also more responsibility.
“It’s a lot of investment,” she said. “It’s a lot of risk, hoping for a reward.”
Surf Baby wants to perform more in Stockton, Modesto and the Bay Area, while becoming more involved in the community. She hopes to collaborate with local businesses, programs and other creatives — not only to build her own career, but to give something back to the place she still calls home.
Her dream collaboration is Larry June, an artist she admires for his emphasis on wellness, encouragement and affirmations, themes that also run through her own music.
“I like the whole healthy vibe he goes for,” she said. “Talking good about yourself, the affirmations, which I speak a lot of in my music as well.”
That interest in spirituality and affirmation started years ago, when a friend introduced her to a new way of thinking about possibility, creativity and what she could make of her life. The idea stayed with her: that people can speak better things over themselves, that confidence can be practiced, that music can help someone feel more whole.
For Surf Baby, that is the message beneath the name, the covers, the harmonies and the hooks.
She wants people to feel good. She wants women to feel comfortable taking up space. She wants Stockton to know there is more than one way to sound like home.
And if people see her in the city, she wants them to say hello.
“It’s gonna be love,” she said. “If you give me love, I’m giving y’all love.”