Steve Lacy is back with Oh Yeah?, his third album, and he is doing it after four years away from a full release cycle. The 28-year-old is in London promoting the record while much of the world still knows him for one song: Bad Habit.
That single was one of the biggest songs of 2022, climbed to No 1 in the US and fed a sold-out tour across North America, Europe and Australia. For Lacy, it also widened a career that had already been moving for years; he received his first Grammy nomination at 17 as part of the Internet with Syd, won a Grammy with the group, and later earned attention for producing Kendrick Lamar’s Pride from Damn on an iPhone.
By the time Bad Habit exploded, he was no longer a newcomer trying to prove he belonged. He had already released Apollo XXI, and the cover of Gemini Rights only deepened the mystery for listeners who may still not know what he looks like, even as his music moved into the mainstream. Lacy has said his name is bigger than his face, and he seems comfortable with that imbalance. He said he has not made any new famous friends, does not get hounded in public and has remained almost unrecognisable despite being one of the most celebrated musicians of his generation.
The clean story would be that the label caught up with him. Lacy does not seem interested in that version. He said the word genius had already been debunked, and a bruising three out of 10 review from Anthony Fantano mattered because it punctured the teenage version of himself that thought he was perfect. “That shit got debunked,” he said, adding that the low rating “pissed me off, but I needed it.” By his own account, he was “gassed the fuck up” as a teenager and eventually got bored with his own choices, which pushed him toward the communal side of songwriting. “We’re supposed to do this shit together,” he said.
That shift matters because Oh Yeah? is not arriving as a victory lap. It is the next step after a huge hit, a long silence and a clearer sense of how Lacy wants to work now. He was in London mostly shopping for books while promoting the album and had recently bought a new home in Los Angeles. What remains unanswered is the one thing his new songs still withhold: how much of the heartbreak and trauma behind them he is willing to put in the open.
