Steve Lacy will release his third album, Oh Yeah?, on July 17 via RCA Records. The singer previewed the LP with anthemic single “The Feeling,” an emotionally-wrought number about a relationship in turmoil.
“The heart takes what it wants/ I’m not scared to bleed, you know our history,” he sings. “After all, there’s one thing I don’t know/ Am I your baby? Am I your baby?”
Along with the single, Lacy shared a music video for the track directed by Matt Castellanos.
Lacy has been hinting at Oh Yeah? since last year. Last year he released “Nice Shoes” as a trailer of sorts for the album, a follow-up to 2022’s Gemini Rights.
He told Rolling Stone in September, “I feel safe enough and close enough to start talking about it now, and get the title out and just get the energy in the air. I’ve never worked where I kind of announce it while I’m still working on it. I feel like rappers work until the last minute.”
He added that he recorded some of the album in Paris. “I just love it,” Lacy said. “I love the color of all the beiges and the lights and how old everything is, even the lighting at night. It’s just the vibe. I think it inspires me based on the clarity that I have being here.”
A press release describes the forthcoming album as “the culmination of a four-year journey whereupon Steve found himself feeling at home in foreign countries and situations and less at home at home. Taking the reins of the production, writing, performance, and the creative, Steve eventually found his way back.”
Lacy told Rolling Stone he was thinking more intently about his lyrics this time around. “When I first started making shit or producing stuff with the Internet, I would always make the beat, make a hook, and just give it away,” he said. “That was my process for a while, so words were always just kind of secondary. I’m like, ‘If my beat hard, this bass line hard, the chords hard, what else do we need?’ But now I’m like, ‘OK, I want to say shit how I would say shit.’”
