Premature Evaluation: Steve Lacy Oh yeah?

It’s all so fluid. The songs on Steve Lacy’s new album Oh yeah? seem to spill out of him with ease, without regard for definition or expectation. Lacy’s interviews about the new LP — his first since 2022’s Grammy-winning Gemini Rights and its chart-topping breakout hit, “Bad Habit” — suggest he worked harder than ever on this music, that he locked in to a new degree. That sense of intense concentration doesn’t come across because the listening experience is so breezy.

It’s not that Oh yeah? sounds sloppy or unfinished. It’s a fully realized work, one of the most purely enjoyable albums of the year. But even at its most polished, the album moves with a pleasing looseness. Lacy says the label gave him a lot of leeway, and that does come across. You never get the sense that some executive meddled with this record or forced Lacy to create a radio-optimized “Bad Habit” sequel. It feels more like an unguarded look into the mind of a musical prodigy as he matures into a career artist, exploring the nuances of modern romance and queer sexuality with newfound clarity.

I’ve grown weary of journalists and music industry types pointing out that an artist’s music was shaped by the internet. No shit; that’s been true of every kid for the past quarter-century. At this point it would be more interesting if someone’s music wasn’t shaped by the internet. Please find a new framing device. That said, Lacy came of age in the Internet, the Odd Future-affiliated alt-R&B band founded by Syd and Matt Martians, which recruited him as a guitarist when he was still in high school. The group’s eclectic, devil-may-care approach clearly rubbed off on Lacy, who had worked with artists as disparate as Kendrick Lamar and Vampire Weekend before he could legally drink. He may have taken even more from his proximity to fellow Odd Future affiliate Frank Ocean, this album’s clearest precursor.

Ocean’s artfully minimalist Blonde looms large over Lacy’s agile vocal melodies, his penchant for pivots that turn a song on its side, and the sparse acoustic reveries sprinkled throughout the tracklist. Yet there’s a lot more going on, stylistically speaking. Just as Gemini Rights put sort of a lo-fi chillwave filter over retro rock, pop, and soul (“Bad Habit” was the first song to simultaneously top Billboard’s hip-hop, R&B, and alternative rock charts), I can hear the concurrent indie synth-psych sounds popularized by MGMT in the late 2000s and early 2010s all over Oh yeah?, from the first keyboard notes of anthemic opener “oh yeah” to the clanging guitar textures of closer “bebe.” 

The latter track, co-written with Lacy’s writing partner Matthew Castellanos and his frequent collaborator Fousheé, exemplifies the blurring of traditions at play. Within the song’s contained clamor, a regal bassline evokes Willie Hutch’s “I Choose You,” the ’70s soul jam that served as the foundation for “Int’l Players Anthem.” Yet the track actually sampled on “bebe” comes from a far different musical tradition: “Rusted,” an acoustic dirge from D+, the indie-pop supergroup featuring Beat Happening’s Bret Lunsford, the Microphones’ Phil Elverum, and Karl Blau. 

Willie Hutch’s swagger and D+’s twee idiosyncrasies are both readily apparent in Lacy’s approach, and they never feel at odds. He’s fully synthesized his influences into music that manages to be deeply personal without sacrificing its big-tent appeal. On Oh yeah?, he does so with assists from an eclectic range of helpers. SZA, a boundary-flouting talent with an equally conversational approach, makes an ideal duet partner on the stripped-down banger “is it cool.” Erykah Badu and a sampled new age track called “Root Chakra” multiply the vibes on “pure color,” a textured mood piece on which Lacy does his best Moses Sumney impression over a trip-hop beat. Cecile Believe, the Montreal indie synthpop artist with connections to PC Music and a past life on Sufjan Stevens’ label, guests on “lovesexdrugbomb,” a wah guitar swoon co-written by Tyler, The Creator. 

From Ravyn Lenae to John Carroll Kirby to Porches’ Aaron Maine, the credits are strewn with fascinating names. Yet Oh yeah? does not come off like a star-studded album. It’s the Steve Lacy show through and through, a stellar showcase for his gifts and proclivities. They’ve rarely shined brighter than on “the feeling,” an electronic hip-hop power ballad in the vein of Kanye West’s “Runaway,” which makes emotional chord changes and indelible pop hooks (“Am I your baby?”) sound as effortless as breathing. Be it the easygoing pop-rock of “doom” or the hectic electronic clatter of “nice shoes,” he sounds entirely at home, and he crams all this sonic diversity into a concise 10 tracks.

Oh yeah? does have an Achilles heel: This guy’s lyrics are consistently terrible. While making this album, Lacy gave up substances from coffee to edibles, believing an unaltered mind and body allowed him to create at a higher level. He told one interviewer that his elevated devotion to his craft extends to “having the highest consideration for words and scratching beyond the surface and not being formulaic.” He told another, “I’ve been falling in love with writing. These are probably some of the best verses I ever wrote.” I dunno, man. I haven’t winced this much listening to an otherwise-excellent album since Kanye was at his peak.

“It’s not really about writing pop bops,” Lacy said recently. “I want to make music that resonates… Music I want to sing, to feel in my body… Music that helps you heal and process weird, complex emotions.” Oh yeah? is that kind of record for sure, and yet: “I’m a big baby suckin’ on big titties/ Karma’s a bitch, and I bet she’s pretty.” And: “Been a while since I had the coochie stuck in my teeth.” And: “I don't wanna cheat no more, be no whore/ I would rather be the one that you tell your mom about and stuff.” Some lines, like the opening bars from “nice shoes,” are vivid and memorable enough that they circle the rim a few times and drop through the net: “If I had a dollar for the friends I would fuck/ I could buy a pair of really nice shoes/ Life is but a stain, it’s not a tattoo/ It's lame to chase youth.” 

Viewed more charitably, the sense that we’re hearing Lacy’s tossed-off text messages and half-baked poetry contributes to the album’s free-flowing vibe. His wordplay never sounds labored (tortured, maybe), and you never wonder whether you’re getting the real him. The same raw, uncut quality that makes me roll my eyes also contributes to the intimacy that permeates even the slickest moments. As with some of its guiding lights, Oh yeah? plays like a diary scrawled within a virtuosic pop album. Clunkers notwithstanding, Lacy is a magnetic creative force whose songs feel like meaningful dispatches from his generation. His charms far outweigh his flaws. Am I ready to anoint him as a genius? Not quite. But will I be returning to his album frequently? Oh yeah.

Oh yeah? is out 7/17 on L-M Records/RCA.