{"id":817939,"date":"2026-07-22T05:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/817939\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T05:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:28:15","slug":"steve-lacy-oh-yeah-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/817939\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Lacy: Oh yeah? Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The pop-star magic of 2022\u2019s massive \u201cBad Habit,\u201d one of the defining hits of the TikTok era, is that it\u2019s a big, professional smash that doesn\u2019t really sound like one. The unexpected breakout from Steve Lacy<\/a>\u2019s Grammy-winning Gemini Rights<\/a> widened the scope of his ditzy, talky demos while hanging onto the looseness of a guy freestyling in his childhood bedroom. Compared to the old stuff he used to drop on his own when he was mainly known as the youngin\u2019 ripping the guitar in the R&B band the Internet<\/a>, \u201cBad Habit\u201d isn\u2019t nearly as diaristic or cheeky, but it captures the casual awkwardness and embarrassment of having a crush. With hummable melodies and a killer guitar riff, it does so in a way that is both personal without saying much and universal without trying hard to be. There\u2019s a lot of dudes out here that would sell their soul for an uncomplicated yet complicated jam just like that.<\/p>\n

But \u201cBad Habit\u201d definitely wasn\u2019t banged out in one session, even if it sounds like one of those moments of accidental genius you\u2019d see in a musical biopic\u2014you know, Bob Dylan pulling up to the studio with an electric guitar on a whim or Snoop and Dre coming up with \u201cNuthin\u2019 But a \u2018G\u2019 Thang\u201d (ad-libs and everything) on the fly. With star-whisperers in the cut\u2014Foushe\u00e9<\/a>, Diana Gordon, and John Carroll Kirby\u2014Lacy workshopped the track for \u201cprobably a year\u201d to get it to sound so effortless. That spirit of a tinkering boy wonder dropped into the industry machine seems to come along for Oh yeah?, Lacy\u2019s first album in four years, which is doing a lot of work to scale up the musical palette and keep it chill at the same time. It doesn\u2019t come off as organic as it did on \u201cBad Habit.\u201d You can see the strategy in motion.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

It can take me out of an album when I\u2019m thinking more about what an artist wants me to feel rather than actually feeling it. In the case of Oh yeah?, the problem is stuffy and inconsistent writing about breakups, sex, and new love that\u2019s too clich\u00e9 to apply to your own life and too vague to imagine as his. He\u2019s stuck in no man\u2019s land. The synthy dream-pop intro \u201coh yeah?,\u201d where he\u2019s picking himself up out of the dumps, is so serious and yet the lyrics have no personality. His heart doesn\u2019t seem to be in the dick jokes on \u201cnice shoes,\u201d but maybe that\u2019s more the fault of his sauceless drum\u2019n\u2019bass rhythm and groggy MCing. If he had a little life when he said it, the overthought TikTok-bio motivation wouldn\u2019t sound so bad: \u201cLife is but a stain, it\u2019s not a tattoo\/Temporary pain, it\u2019s lame to chase youth.\u201d On the in-one-ear-out-the-other \u201cthe feeling,\u201d his Maxwell<\/a>-lite begging goes down smooth but feels vacant: He can\u2019t live without his ex but we don\u2019t know why other than he can\u2019t. He\u2019s staring at their photos but we don\u2019t know what he finds so hot about them other than he does. Not until the cheesy boyband outro does he give anything to grab onto\u2014how they used to fuck on the carpet, the time in 2019 when they stayed at an Airbnb\u2014but it comes too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pop-star magic of 2022\u2019s massive \u201cBad Habit,\u201d one of the defining hits of the TikTok era, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-817939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}