It’s the return of everyone’s favourite bisexual musical polymath!
Anyone who knows me has had to listen to me witter on about my love for Steve Lacy – 2022’s Gemini Rights remains probably my favourite album of this decade so far, a sleek, horny, angry and brilliant piece of music making, pushing R&B into fresh territory to the extent that it was somehow hard to think it even was R&B. It fused Prince style slow jams, bossa nova, grungy guitar and funky beats into a delicious stew that I am still feasting on years later. And in the breakout hit, Bad Habit, Lacy went from cult artist to high(ish) profile star.
To say I was excited about the follow up is probably one of the understatements of the century. To quote our favourite opening pod question, so what was I expecting, and what did I get? I was expecting a lot. What I got was NOT what I was expecting…but is that a bad thing? More on that in a minute.
For those not in the know, a quick Steve Lacy potted history. Born in Compton to a Black American mother and Filipino father (who died when he was 10), he first came to attention via the left field R&B group The Internet in the early 2010s, themselves on a Odd Future offshoot. The Internet were a fabulously curious outfit, openly queer and recognisably R&B while feeling looser and weirder than a lot of their contemporaries.
By this point, Lacy had already established himself as a producer and songwriter of note, famously able to mix an album on an iPhone and still make it sounds amazing. Artists as varied as Solange, Vampire Weekend, Blood Orange and Kendrick L were lining up to work with him or use his songs. What’s interesting, despite that, is that I think it took a while for Lacy to find his own voice as a solo artist. While I enjoyed 2019 debut Apollo XXI, particularly the single Playground, there wasn’t that much there to suggest the giant musical leap he’d make on Gemini Rights, stomping straight onto Prince’s playground with an album of such confidence and quality, it takes your breath away.
And now to Oh Yeah? 4 years later. One thing we know Lacy likes to do is evolve, so I wasn’t necessarily expecting more of the same. Even the title seems to suggest a bit of pushback – oh yeah, is that what you were expecting? First track nice shoes dropped quite a while back, confused the hell out of me – a strange nihilistic chant to a jungle beat, it felt doom-laden and odd. But then came the feeling, and boy oh boy did I fall hard for this track. Everything I love about a Steve Lacy song rolled into one – a soaring beautiful love song with a heartbreaking chorus (Am I your baby?).
Interestingly, those two songs actually express the rather schizophrenic nature of this record. It’s a lot more downbeat and ballad filled than Gemini Rights, and even has some folky stylings. And then mixed amongst those beautiful ballads are quite confrontational, tough workouts like doom and nice shoes. And then, even more fascinating, are Lacy’s songs with collaborators. Other single is it cool? with SZA is pretty recognisably Lacy – a groovy slow jam with bubbling synths and anchored by a growling guitar, with Lacy flipping between emotional anxiety, sincerity and flippancy – something he does across the record lyrically.
But track 4, pure colour a collab with R&B royalty Erykah Badu, goes into a whole other direction altogether and pulls off something quite remarkable quite early in the album’s sequencing – it’s a meditative, spacey and genuinely psychedelic outing, with little in common with the rest of the album. Badu is known as an innovative artist, not afraid of making bold moves, but this is mind-blowing stuff, and it’s the moment in the record when I realised that Lacy was not in the slightest bit interested in spoon feeding more of the same.
The same is true in a very different style with following track show you me, a folky ballad that’s almost like a sad boy singalong (hey, and Steve a word of advice – maybe stop falling in love with guys who aren’t even sure they’re gay?). Neither of these tracks are anything like he made for Gemini Rights and I couldn’t love him more for it. Let’s also take a minute to talk about the production – the SOUND of this record is fascinating: loads of synth bass, drum machines, acoustic guitars, reverbed vocals and vintage synths. It’s such a clever sound – clean but messy, future facing but nostalgic, emotional but brittle. I honestly don’t know how he concocts the noise he puts together, but it is one of the most singular things about this record.
In fact, it’s such a peculiarly individual album, hurling between genres with gay (more gay than bi these days if you ask me, Steve) abandon, it can be quite a disorientating listen, and it won’t appeal to everyone. His lyrics are also quite in your face – he’s a man with a lot of feelings, often at the same time, and you need to ride with the flow. I actually think it’s the most vulnerable album he’s ever made. nothing, for example, is an extraordinary ballad, one of the best he’s ever made, achingly beautiful and charmingly simple.
Criticisms? Well, initially, I thought the sequencing was a bit odd, but I’ve come to love it. Even nice shoes now makes so much more sense as an angry intro to the smooth AF second half jam in your world. But I do think it can be hard to read the pace of the album at times, and it’s certainly not an ‘easy’ record to digest, way less so than Gemini Rights. Finally, I wonder if it’s missing one final killer tune to round it off: I like closer bebe, but it feels like a mid-album groove than a proper finale.
What you”ll make it of it is quite beyond me, nor the wider music loving public. But I think Lacy has cemented his reputation as a generational artist pushing his music into new and surprising places. Over to you, brothers…?
