Steve Lacy has been quiet, and he used that silence well. The Grammy-winning artist resurfaced June 5 with “the feeling,” the lead single from his forthcoming third studio album Oh yeah?, due July 17 via RCA Records. A music video directed by Matt Castellanos arrived alongside it.
The track is groovy and introspective, blending wah-wah bass lines with cavernous melodies and orchestrated R&B textures that call back to his Gemini Rights era while clearly pushing somewhere new. At its emotional center, Lacy keeps returning to one question: “Am I your baby?” It’s the kind of vulnerability that the song wears without apology.
Lacy has been candid about what this album means to him. “I keep using the word ‘design,'” he told Rolling Stone. “It feels like fully designing a new language for myself.” He also noted a deliberate shift in how he’s approaching his words this time around: “I want to say shit how I would say shit.”
Oh yeah? promises to be his most personal work to date, written, produced, and art-directed entirely by Lacy himself. After nearly four years since Gemini Rights, the anticipation couldn’t be higher.
