Yeah Steve Lacy details his struggle after Bad Habit
Steve Lacy's third album Oh Yeah? is out now after a four-year wait, and yeah Steve Lacy says he is not trying to remake Bad Habit—only match its unpolished energy. The Grammy winner tells The Guardian his life is more structured now: he used to do acid on a Wednesday, but he does not have time for that anymore.
Key Takeaways
- Oh Yeah?, Lacy's third album, is out on RCA after roughly four years since Gemini Rights.
- He is not chasing another Bad Habit clone, but wants to match that hit's accidental, scuzzy energy.
- Rolling Stone calls the record one of Gen Z's defining auteur statements, with guests including SZA, Erykah Badu, and Cecile Believe.
- The album digs into heartbreak, queer identity, and his late Filipino father—with darker truths wrapped in deadpan humor.
- Fame still feels uneven to him: “I have famous moments, but I don’t feel like a famous person.”
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Why did yeah Steve Lacy take so long to follow Bad Habit?
Bad Habit was one of 2022’s biggest songs, a U.S. No. 1 that helped push Gemini Rights to roughly 2.8 billion Spotify streams and a 2023 Grammy for best progressive R&B album. A sold-out tour followed across North America, Europe, and Australia.
Lacy did not take a vacation. “I’m not a vacation guy,” he told The Guardian. He set a self-imposed 4/20/2024 deadline, then kept rewriting. “There were still things I needed to learn about myself, about music. So I just kept going.”
Nice Shoes arrived last summer with a Rolling Stone cover, but the finished album waited until he forced decisions. He now calls Oh Yeah? his “most engineered” and “most complete” project yet.
What is Oh Yeah? actually about?
According to Lacy, the record is inspired by a six-year-old breakup that still shapes his writing—not a sequel to Gemini Rights’ rebound chapter. He identifies as queer and says he is mourning the early freedom of that relationship more than the person.
“When I was 19, I would do acid on a Wednesday. I don’t have time for that shit any more,” he said. “Now everything’s more structured. I’m a boss and everyone’s looking for me to answer things and execute big ideas.”
Lyrically he goes further than before. On Is It Cool? he sings about his father—“Tatay died when I was like 10”—lines he says he had never put on record about being Filipino or his dad’s death. Comedy still coats the heavy stuff, from Doom’s crude one-liners to what he calls silent crash-outs lasting “three to five years.”
How are critics hearing the new album?
Rolling Stone’s Jeff Ihaza argues Oh Yeah? is Lacy’s strongest claim yet as a defining Gen Z pop auteur, stitching breakbeats, guitar ballads, trip-hop murk, and near-cringe humor into one language. Features include SZA on Is It Cool?, Erykah Badu on Pure Color, and Cecile Believe on lovesexdrugbomb.
Where Gemini Rights leaned into pop maximalism and billion-stream hooks, the review says Oh Yeah? works at a subtler register—still restless, still intimate, and still unmistakably Steve.
At 28, Lacy still insists his name is bigger than his face. Offstage he bought a Los Angeles home, stays a homebody, and shops for novels in London. On record, though, the kid who once played guitar at his sister’s wedding finally sounds ready to sit with the trauma—and the boss job—that success brought.