Steve Lacy’s ‘Oh Yeah?’ Draws Beauty From Uncertainty
Behind the synths, hooks, and humor lies a deeply human portrait of a man still learning how to love and be loved.
As someone who never listens to the radio and can’t name a single song by Travis Scott or The Weeknd, I wouldn’t exactly consider my music taste mainstream.
This is exactly why, four years ago, I was astonished to discover that “Bad Habit”—the breezy bedroom-pop ballad from Steve Lacy’s second solo effort, Gemini Rights—was the No. 1 song in the country.
This wasn’t the first time one of my overlooked favs had suddenly become everyone else’s—Robin Thicke’s “Lost Without U” and Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” elicited a similar reaction—but something about Lacy’s ascent felt…different.
For years, his lo-fi guitar licks and candid ketamine confessionals seemed destined for rabid cult fandom instead of pop ubiquity. But as songs like “Dark Red” and “C U Girl” caught fire on Reddit boards, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world took notice.
I just didn’t expect “Bad Habit” to be the song to do it.
So now, emboldened by his commercial breakthrough and with his status as an alt-R&B star solidified, where will his sonic agenda take us? Last summer, Lacy hinted at a seismic shift with “Nice Shoes,” ditching his trademark guitar for a propulsive drum and bass bonanza—and Oh Yeah? delivers on that promise.
Described as “a record for guitar kids who love synths and synth kids who love guitars,” Oh Yeah? expands upon Lacy’s penchant for “cute” choruses and meandering basslines and broadens his musical vocabulary with a generous dollop of synthesizers. The opening salvo of “oh yeah?,” “is it cool?”—with SZA riding shotgun—and “the feeling” immediately establishes this new status quo.
While “oh yeah?” reeks of 90s power pop nostalgia, “is it cool?” finds Lacy engulfed in one of his favorite pastimes: taking inventory of his flaws. Over a ringing telephone adorned in colorful synths and haunting vocals, the Compton native admits he “really, really wants commitment” and “I don’t wanna cheat no more, be no whore.” But since losing his father to lung cancer as a 10-year-old, he insists he “never needed a man.” Lacy has never shied away from using humor to anesthetize his pain, and the self-sabotage he mistakes for intimacy is intrinsic to the album’s songwriting.
“I’ll have a joke and then a line that makes you want to cry after,” he recently told Rolling Stone.
And he’s not wrong, as evidenced by blunt deflections like “I turned out to be just fine, I just cheat every now and again.”
Why go to therapy when you can fuck your way through childhood trauma?
Lacy’s catalog is rife with vignettes of the struggles—and spoils—of navigating his bisexuality, and that theme remains prevalent throughout Oh Yeah?. Be it dismissive on “lovesexdrugbomb” (“We break up, okay, I’ll find a man/ Dump him and then find you once again”) or reflective on “show you me” (“Been a while since I had some coochie stuck in my teeth/ As of late I guess I’ve been leaning closer to D”). This pinballing between insecurities, impulses, and genders further complicates Lacy’s unending quest to not only find true love, but himself.
And that’s the beauty of his music: bearing witness to his becoming.
After Erykah Badu and Lacy trade tabs of acid on the eerie “pure colour,” we arrive at the bonfire singalong “show you me.” In dire need of rescue from “the Love Police” after realizing he’s tripped and fallen in love, he succumbs to the perils of doubt. Is this too good to be true? It’s a road we’ve all been down before, as he ricochets between infatuation (“Had to cry a river just to find the fish in the sea”) and spiraling like the rest of us (“Are you even gay?”). But just as that emotional whiplash registers, he introduces a plot twist: they haven’t even met.
But is this longing to finally meet in person? Or to unveil the parts of himself he’s kept hidden? That distinction matters—and the answer might be buried in another corner of the album.
Steve Lacy has come a long way from the 17-year-old wunderkind who earned his first Grammy nomination, but commercial success hasn’t tamed the artist I’ve come to admire. If anything, Oh Yeah? provides him with an even bigger platform to bloom into one of the defining auteurs of his generation.
Provided he doesn’t sabotage that as well.