Through his decade–long career, Steve Lacy has become both an artist’s artist and mainstream star. Since his early days as a member of alternative R&B group The Internet, Lacy’s instrumental prowess and vibrant production has made him one of the most influential voices in contemporary R&B, even scoring him a Grammy in 2023. After Gemini Rights and the massive success of his single “Bad Habit,” Lacy had to figure out what came next after reaching the pinnacle of success as an artist.
On his third studio album, Oh yeah?, Lacy doesn’t try to recreate the viral success of projects past. Instead, he looks inward—exploring heartbreak, uncertainty, and the complicated process of rebuilding oneself after losing things that once felt central to your life.
Almost entirely self–produced, Oh yeah? highlights Lacy’s continued growth as a musician. He leans heavily into alternative and rock–influenced sounds, with gritty guitar and bass lines on almost every song on the album. Lacy worked with Matt Martians of The Internet and English producer Marius de Vries for additional production, as well as Matthew Castellanos for songwriting.
The album opens with its title track, “oh yeah?,” which establishes the uncertainty at the center of the record. Rather than announcing his return to the spotlight with confidence, the song explores the feelings of sorting through the aftermath of a failed relationship. The track serves as an entry point into an album built around emotional ambiguity. Lacy no longer feels the need to prove himself; instead, he chooses to look inward and untangle his innermost thoughts in search of clarity.
This search continues on the third track and the album’s first official single, “the feeling.” Lacy treats the heartbreak he’s experienced as a constant cycle—an emotion that lingers long after the relationship ends. His songwriting avoids closure and instead finds comfort in the underlying anxiety. In the bridge of the song, Lacy sings “when your heart’s on your sleeve but it don’t even matter / when you’re only a friend, don’t it just make you sadder?” The lyrics capture the frustration of emotional vulnerability that can’t be reciprocated. The contrast between having his “heart on [his] sleeve” and knowing that those feelings aren’t shared reflects the complications that come with not only losing your partner but also the shared intimacy that came with them. By grounding the song in specific memories, Lacy continues to make the loss feel personal and unresolved.
In many ways, the emotional centerpiece of the album comes on the seventh track, “nothing.” Stripped of the dense production found on other songs across the record, the track places Lacy’s songwriting in the spotlight. He trades the tongue–in–cheek songwriting found in his earlier work and the rest of this album (such as “doom”) for a much more serious and yearning tone. It feels as though Lacy ripped a page straight out of his diary and delivered it straight to the listeners, paired with only acoustic guitar and solo vocals. The song captures the strange reworking of one’s life after losing someone who once felt central to their world. Lacy leaves room for the loneliness and settles into it. Rather than portraying heartbreak through anger or resentment, he captures the pain that unrequited love brings.
The song’s sparse production mirrors the sense of emotional emptiness. Without the layered instrumentation that often fills his music, Lacy leaves space for the weight of his words with the listener. “Nothing” feels less like a breakup in real time and more like the aftermath—the moment where one person is still holding onto a connection that the other has already released. It’s a discussion of love’s imbalance.
Elsewhere, Lacy continues to push his sound forward. He leans heavily into trip–hop and a psychedelic, dream–like production. “Pure colour,” featuring Erykah Badu, is less a showcase for the legendary Badu, and acts more as a way for listeners to be fully a part of the atmosphere of the album before continuing with “show you me,” the album’s fifth track. Badu’s presence blends seamlessly with Lacy’s production, creating arguably the most immersive moment on the album. The duo doesn’t try to compete for attention and instead work together to let the music do the work.
On “lovesexdrugbomb,” Lacy works with artist Cecile Believe, bouncing between distorted textures and a captivating melody. The song follows a pattern of attachment and repetition: being in love, separating, and finding his way back to the same partner, for better or worse. Even as the relationship continues to evolve and both people move in different directions, they continue to return to each other—it’s a connection that’s difficult to replace despite its instability.
That cycle is what makes the song so compelling. Love isn’t a straightforward journey—it’s chaotic, living somewhere between disorder and bliss. With Believe’s vocals layered with Lacy’s and his production, the track mirrors the emotional confusion that lies at its core. It bounces between feeling euphoric, overwhelming, and slightly out of control—but it works.
The biggest risk Lacy takes on the album comes on the ninth track, “nice shoes / in your world.” The track spans nine minutes and was originally released in 2025, when he first announced the album. It transformed itself from a three minute song to an expansive two–parter with a newly–produced introduction and an extended second half. Rather than come across as self–indulgent, it reads more as a tribute to the work Lacy put into creating the album. In the second part, Lacy grapples with the idea of fame, mentioning that he often has to bring himself back down to Earth. He sings that as much as he likes being in the listeners’ world, he much prefers being in his own (“It’s too much being here, I can’t be here too much”). The song allows self–discovery to unfold naturally rather than force a concrete conclusion to be found.
If Gemini Rights captured Steve Lacy stepping into the spotlight, Oh yeah? explores what happens when there’s no longer a need or desire to chase it. While artists across genres continue to borrow from the sound he helped popularize, Lacy remains virtually impossible to replicate, because he refuses to become stagnant. He chooses reflection over repetition, which led to the craft of an album that’s as emotionally revealing as it is sonically adventurous.
Oh yeah? doesn’t offer easy answers on love, fame, or identity. Rather, it finds Lacy doing something much more impressive: learning to live with the unknown.
