\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \n\tLacy was named a brand ambassador for YSL back in 2023 and attends its menswear presentation, typically held in Paris, every year during fashion week. On this sweltering Tuesday afternoon in June, he wears a full YSL outfit replete with slim-fitting leather pants, tall black leather boots that almost serve as pants in their own right, and a crisp, white, geometrically tailored button-up, all from previous years\u2019 collections.<\/p>\n \n\tOnce our driver stops to let us out, Lacy bolts from the car in what appears to be a single, fluid motion. I notice a few necks crane in astonishment \u2014 your eyes are not deceiving you, that is indeed Grammy-winning musician Steve Lacy speed-walking down the streets of Paris in thigh-high Saint Laurent boots, looking exactly like a rock star.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLacy is perhaps best known for his chart-topping 2022 single, \u201cBad Habit,\u201d one of the first bona fide hits of the post-pandemic era. Everywhere you looked, swiped, or scrolled, you heard that chorus \u2014 \u201cI bite my tongue, it\u2019s a bad habit\u201d<\/em> \u2014 capturing the specific regret of not taking a chance with a crush. The song\u2019s candidly self-deprecating hook \u2014 \u201cI wish I knew you wanted me\u201d<\/em> \u2014 helped make it stick, connecting with something universal, even a bit profound, while maintaining a featherlight sense of levity. \u201cThat\u2019s literally how conversations with me go,\u201d Lacy says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, a thought here and something profound there, and then a joke right after that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tAs the second single from his sophomore album, Gemini Rights<\/a>,<\/em> the track had an immediate, nearly alchemical quality. Its buoyant drums clomping beneath equally rambunctious guitar riffs hit like a scientific fact. It would be nominated for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2023 Grammys<\/a>, along with Gemini Rights,<\/em> for which Lacy won Best Progressive R&B Album.<\/p>\n \n\tBefore he became a solo artist, Lacy, 27, made music as a member of the group the Internet<\/a>, alongside singer-songwriter Syd and producer Matt Martians, who were then established names within the L.A.-based Odd Future collective. He served as co-executive producer on the group\u2019s breakout album, Ego Death<\/a>,<\/em> which earned him his first Grammy nomination, in 2016, while he was still in high school. \u201cI love the first thing I ever worked on being called Ego Death,<\/em>\u201d he says. \u201cI came in egoless.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe story of how Lacy\u2019s career started is like something out of a VH1 biopic: A shy and talented teenager from Compton who\u2019d lost his father to cancer meets a group of gifted young musicians who take him in and nurture his skills before he becomes a superstar. \u201cWhen Steve was young, his mom was really protective of him. We were the only people that she trusted Steve to be out the house with when he was 15, 16,\u201d Martians recalls. At some point during the Ego Death<\/em> sessions, Martians needed a bass line for a track and asked to hear some of the music Lacy had been working on. \u201cHe started playing me a lot of the stuff that he had been making on his phone at the time. And I was blown away. I was like, \u2018This is the type of music you make? This is insane,\u2019\u2009\u201d Martians says. \u201cHe was really shy. He didn\u2019t realize how good he was.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tCue the montage showing Lacy\u2019s mastery of every instrument under the sun. Not only guitar, but drums, bass, and, as of late, synthesizers. Of course, he can sing, too. In the music video for \u201cPlayground,\u201d from his debut album, Apollo XXI,<\/em> he\u2019s in a band composed entirely of other Steve Lacys, which seems fitting.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tShortly after the release of Ego Death,<\/em> Lacy met Kendrick Lamar<\/a>, who he would eventually work with on \u201cPride,\u201d from Kendrick\u2019s 2017 album, DAMN<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> Naturally, Lacy remembers his first encounter with the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper in cinematic fashion. \u201cI come in, I got all this shit on me, and Kendrick\u2019s like, \u2018I seen your face in some music videos,\u2019\u2009\u201d Lacy recalls. \u201cI said, \u2018Hey, yours too, man.\u2019 And then he laughed.\u201d Lacy timidly offered to play Lamar some of the music he\u2019d been making at the time, and one of those tracks would go on to become \u201cPride,\u201d which earlier this year joined \u201cBad Habit\u201d and \u201cDark Red\u201d on the list of Steve Lacy productions to top 1 billion streams on Spotify alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt was Gemini Rights<\/em> that solidified Lacy among his generation\u2019s greats. The album\u2019s fluidity of genre \u2014 skating between funk, pop, rock, R&B, and hip-hop with the ease of a Spotify playlist \u2014 spoke to a cultural sensibility among Gen Z\u2019ers, whose experience with music has so far been defined by infinite everything all of the time. The record also seemed to naturally strike a chord on TikTok, where in addition to \u201cBad Habit,\u201d the album opener, \u201cStatic,\u201d became ubiquitous as the go-to audio for the viral trend \u201cEnglish or Spanish,\u201d where users stood stone frozen, backed by Lacy\u2019s iconic opening lines \u2014 \u201cBaby, you got something in your nose. Sniffin\u2019 that K, did you fill the hole?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI find a lot of music today online and stuff. I don\u2019t really believe in the whole attention-span conversation,\u201d he says, referring to the belief that platforms like TikTok are depleting his generation\u2019s ability to focus. \u201cI think people gravitate toward the strongest moments of things.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tWe arrive at the Bourse de Commerce \u2014 a concentric palace, once home to France\u2019s open-air wheat exchange and now dedicated to the arts \u2014 in the nick of time, albeit at the wrong entrance. Korean pop star Cha Eun-woo draws squeals from the crowd of fans gathered out front, while security ushers Lacy through a small throng of civilians on the side of the building, up to where he\u2019s supposed to have his photo taken. Once we get inside, greeted by artist C\u00e9leste Boursier-Mougenot\u2019s installation \u201cClinamen,\u201d featuring a basin filled with crystalline water and speckled with floating white ceramic bowls, it\u2019s a flurry of double-cheek kisses and about three dozen \u201cHey, how are you\u2019s?\u201d Lacy flashes a mischievous grin and tells me he \u201cmight\u201d have taken an edible earlier. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I did. Or if the edible took me,\u201d he tells me after the show. I ask if having to walk to the event in 90-degree heat bothered him. \u201cI don\u2019t overthink these things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNowadays, Lacy is mostly thinking about music. His new album, slated to drop in the near future, is called Oh Yeah?<\/em> and features cover art that calls to mind a fictional beverage mascot known for bursting through walls. \u201cI took his face out the glass. Hopefully I don\u2019t get sued,\u201d he jokes. Lacy\u2019s been teasing the project in plain sight, wearing merch for the album in photos on his socials, all while fans clamor for new music. As for what inspired him to call his album Oh Yeah?<\/em>, all Lacy says is \u201cthe question\u2019s important.\u201d For how tongue-in-cheek it all seems, the record is undoubtedly Lacy\u2019s most confident work yet. \u201cThis one has taken a lot of time and thought,\u201d he says. \u201cI keep using the word \u2018design.\u2019 It feels like fully designing a new language for myself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cFor a while, words were just kind of secondary. But \u2028 now I\u2019m like, \u2018OK, I want to say shit how I would say shit.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tDespite his penchant for memorable lines (\u201cDark Red,\u201d opens with \u201cSomething bad is about to happen to me\u201d), Lacy says this album marks the first time he\u2019s consciously thought about lyrics. \u201cWhen 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,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was my process for a while, so words were always just kind of secondary. I\u2019m like, \u2018If my beat hard, this bass line hard, the chords hard, what else do we need?\u2019 But now I\u2019m like, \u2018OK, I want to say shit how I would say shit.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe day before the YSL show, I\u2019m in the car with Lacy, who is, of course, in charge of music, this time playing the latest version of songs from the album. We\u2019re en route to a video shoot on the Seine, and along the way, we\u2019re served an up-close view of Parisian landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre-Dame Cathedral. You get a fuller sense of music when listening in the contained private amphitheater of a good car stereo. The <\/span>subtleties and texture in the vocals, the tactile rumble of drums, and the almost effervescent guitar melodies. The tracks I hear strike a personal, introspective tone, as if Lacy\u2019s taken the perceptive and cunning lens he\u2019s used to observe life and love from 10,000 feet, and turned it inward. He inhabits these songs emotionally, exploring themes around his racial identity, his relationship to love and trust, and his own sexual fluidity, all with the halfway comedic, occasionally devastating style of observation he\u2019s built a career on. \u201cI feel like I could just say shit, but also have little pokes at real human shit that you need to know and realize,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a mix of stupid shit and real-ass bars.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tLacy self-produced Oh Yeah? <\/em>Sonically, the album is adventurous, diving into sounds like trip-hop and electronic while also building classic rock ballads fit for stadiums and arenas. In the past few years, Lacy\u2019s taken an interest in synthesizers, which you can hear on his new songs. Famously, Lacy\u2019s favorite band is Stereolab, and on his latest record he channels the Anglo-French group\u2019s playfully melodic sensibility. The result is the type of all-encompassing pop album that artists like Prince (to whom Lacy is frequently compared) used to make. \u201cWhen I heard the album, I said, \u2018You really made a pop album. And not pop in the sense of current-day pop, but pop what it used to be as far as greats,\u2019\u2009\u201d Martians says. \u201cHe is getting into areas that I feel like are very reminiscent of a pop of yesteryear, which is very good.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLacy plays me \u201cNice Shoes,\u201d which he describes as a \u201ctrailer\u201d for this new moment in his career. He says he plans to release the song alongside this story \u2014 it\u2019s out at midnight tonight, in fact. The track, as yet untitled, rides a drum-and-bass-style breakbeat that could best be described as filthy.<\/em> The lyrics volley between playful and insightful, with Lacy musing on his dick getting hard at the thought of holding hands with his new crush \u2014 \u201cromantic boners,\u201d as he describes it to me \u2014 as well as the sometimes subtle nature of melancholy. \u201cCrazy how you could be sad and not notice,\u201d he sings. \u201cAll I need is my guitar and serotonin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIndeed, fans needn\u2019t worry that Lacy has abandoned the guitar for electronics. Toward the song\u2019s end, the bpm cuts in half, and he\u2019s back on the six-string, plucking a quintessential Steve Lacy melody before his vocals glitch out, segueing into the break. Just like how he wants his lyrics to reflect the way he talks, Lacy is ready for his music to showcase parts of his personality and tastes he hasn\u2019t let us in on yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBACK AT HIS hotel, in one of those tiny elevators that apparently plague the city of Paris, Lacy tells me how he\u2019s become jaded about fashion week events. He finds the small talk and obligatory niceties draining. Also, he doesn\u2019t quite see himself as a celebrity. Incidentally, that\u2019s why he feels so comfortable in Paris, a city with a far less pervasive obsession with fame than most places in the U.S. Lacy\u2019s been traveling to Paris on and off from his home in Los Angeles to record the album. The weekend before we meet, Lacy went to Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s tour stop in the city (where Jay-Z<\/a> would join her onstage<\/a> for a Kanye-less rendition of \u201cNi**as in Paris\u201d). He wasn\u2019t backstage or in a VIP section, but in the crowd alongside his pal, musician Moses Sumney, whom he met at a pre-Grammy brunch around 2016. \u201cWe went as fans, took the train, we\u2019re in the crowd, and I\u2019m like, \u2018In L.A. that would be crazy,\u2019\u2009\u201d he says. \u201cBut here, it was so cool and chill.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t drink the Kool-Aid. I\u2019m a student before anything.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tLacy has mastered a kind of low-key fame, in which his fans are legitimately obsessed with him, and the music\u2019s always good enough to make a splash in the mainstream \u2014 enough for him to get invited to fashion shows in Paris. He cites artists like Frank Ocean, Tyler, the Creator, and Solange as having the type of career he can see for himself. \u201cThey never conformed to the shape of pop music. But they can probably do whatever they want and headline whatever festival,\u201d he says. \u201cThey all designed their own worlds, and people come to them.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s par for the course among the current generation of superstars. Everywhere you look these days, the biggest names in music are looking to shed the artifice of celebrity in search of more authentic audience connections. It\u2019s Charli XCX hosting raves, or Drake linking up with young streamers and content creators like Kai Cenat, or Justin Bieber\u2019s new album, Swag<\/a>,<\/em> where he ditches his polished heartthrob image for a more unfiltered and down-to-earth persona influenced by his actual personal taste.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLacy embodies this naturally, which often means treating fame more like an annoying sibling following him around than a fact of life. \u201cI don\u2019t drink the Kool-Aid because I\u2019m a student first before anything,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember when I was first popping and people were talking crazy at me online. I remember bitching to my mom like, \u2018Why the fuck is anybody bothering me? I just want to make music.\u2019 She was like, \u2018Steve, you\u2019re blessed with this platform. You need to be grateful.\u2019\u2009\u201d Lacy says he\u2019s been able to pass on that knowledge to up-and-coming stars like PinkPantheress, who said in an interview in i-D <\/em>that he helped her navigate the sudden onset of viral fame. \u201cMatt Martians was like that to me,\u201d Lacy says. \u201cSo it\u2019s cool that I can pay it forward and be that person for the other youngsters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2022, as \u201cBad Habit\u201d reached peak virality, live venues began easing Covid restrictions, making for a long-awaited return of concerts. As he toured in support of Gemini Rights,<\/em> Lacy went from being a relatively obscure act with a devoted fan base to a mainstream star with thousands of screaming teenage fans. He caught some heat after smashing a camera a fan threw onstage during one of his shows; a clip of the incident went viral. He brings up how many outlets got the facts of the story wrong. \u201cThat\u2019s when I kind of understood what fame was,\u201d he says. \u201cThe story was that I broke this [guy\u2019s] phone and I ended the show. I was like, \u2018Oh, wow. Niggas just lie.\u2019 I finished the show. I was like, \u2018Just make sure that person gets kicked out.\u2019 Because why the fuck are you throwing shit at me?\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tGoing viral right at the start of his tour was a learning experience for Lacy. \u201cIt was a culture shock for me because I was so used to being niche, a cool music-nerd person,\u201d he says. \u201cI think going on the road post-Covid and going viral at the same time invited a lot of rambunctious kids who are going to concerts for the first time. So at first, my body rejected it. And then I think by the end, I was so happy with their rambunctiousness because I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, this is their first show. I\u2019m showing them how to be at a concert, so I want to embrace that energy myself.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter that tour, Lacy went relatively quiet, a move that\u2019s somewhat atypical for an artist who just had a Number One hit and the biggest song of his career. \u201cAnyone else in my position would be like, \u2018Ride this wave,\u2019 but I know I\u2019m going to be here for a little bit. I ain\u2019t worried about that shit,\u201d he says. He sees vindication for his approach in the devotion of the Internet\u2019s fans, who still obsess over clues around possible new music, seven years after their last album. (Lacy says the group has been \u201changing out\u201d and that we can expect new music soon.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cTime is crazy, man, it really tells you. And I think this is why I feel so confident in my choices and my timing, because everything has been so slow and drawn out,\u201d he says. \u201c\u2009\u2018Dark Red\u2019 went platinum five or six years later. So I don\u2019t feel super stressed or entitled to quick virality. I remember even when I first signed to RCA, they were like, \u2018So what do you want?\u2019 I was like, \u2018Man, I want to be as big as I should be. I don\u2019t want to be bigger than I need to be.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNow, after scoring a chart-topping single and a Grammy-winning album, just how big should Steve Lacy be? Outside the YSL show, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter Sombr, real name Shane Michael Boose, comes up to Lacy and tells him he\u2019s one of his heroes. You could say that Sombr is among the first artists to emerge from the generation most directly influenced by Lacy\u2019s music. The budding pop sensation is having a Lacy-esque rise himself. In the past year, he\u2019s nabbed two Top 40 singles, in part thanks to the hyperactive powers of TikTok\u2019s algorithm. For his part, Lacy can sometimes feel unmoored by the age difference between him and some of his fans. \u201cThis one girl was like, \u2018Man, we need the music. I had just graduated high school since the last thing came out,\u2019\u2009\u201d Lacy says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Why the fuck do you got to say it like that?\u2019\u2009\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cMy little ass was <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tOne of the reasons Lacy wanted to attend the YSL show, beyond his love of the clothes, was to formally introduce his new hairstyle, a sharp, clean-cut fade, which he says is the first part of his new era. For years, he sported medium-length braids. \u201cI always change my hair right after I\u2019m done with some shit,\u201d he says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine what else I could do from those braids.\u201d Lacy has the same barber as Tyler, the Creator, and ran into him at one of Tyler\u2019s listening parties in Los Angeles last year, after spending several days contemplating the change. Taking the encounter as a sign, Lacy went ahead with the cut, though the transition was intense. \u201cIt was so emotional. I cried on the way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\tLacy has an easy, sun-soaked California cool. Even when dressed to the nines, he carries an air of comfortable grace, like a dancer. The haircut uncovers his face, chiseled and boyish, like a young Michael Jackson. Before he heads to the show\u2019s afterparty, we stop for a drink at a nearby restaurant, where Lacy explains how he stopped smoking a few years back in service of his voice. A stoner at heart, he\u2019s taken to edibles as his high of choice. It\u2019s all part of a more intentional ethos that\u2019s been guiding Lacy since the release of Gemini Rights.<\/em> He says on this new album he \u201cunderstand[s] energy more than I did on the last one.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOne theme that stands out on the album is romance \u2014 or a lack thereof. Lacy\u2019s new music maintains his sly sense of humor, but with a barefaced melancholy that pushes it to new emotional depths. \u201cI remember I was playing the songs for the label a couple of months ago,\u201d Lacy says. \u201cThey were like, \u2018All right, now play some happier ones.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Fuck.\u2019\u2009\u201d He attributes much of the doom and gloom of those early tracks to a breakup last fall that, for a while, had him reevaluating his relationship to love.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThankfully for Lacy \u2014 and the label \u2014 he has been making happier songs, too. Lately, in fact, he\u2019s feeling very romantic. A few weeks before he left for Paris, he met someone. They met \u201chow the kids meet,\u201d he says coyly, by which he means \u201cdigitally.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOn our third date, it was his birthday, and he wanted to see me, and he was with all of his friends rolling deep as fuck with maybe eight or nine people,\u201d Lacy recalls. \u201cI\u2019ve stopped talking to people I was dating because they wanted me to hang out with their friends, but with him, I met all his friends, and I even hosted the afters for him. That\u2019s how I know I\u2019m crushing hard, because I don\u2019t do that shit for anyone.\u201d Lacy\u2019s ex was even seated near him at the YSL show, though he was emotionally prepared this time as opposed to last year, where their presence at the same event arrived like a \u201cjump scare.\u201d He partially credits his new romance with his current sense of peace with the situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tHe\u2019s found a renewed love for music as well. On one of his trips to Paris this year, he found a particular guitar that managed to rekindle his passion for the instrument. Up to then, Lacy had been feeling like the sound was becoming clich\u00e9. \u201cI went to Paris, and I bought this Gibson from 1990, and it\u2019s got me playing guitar again, so that\u2019s pretty exciting,\u201d he says. \u201cFor a while, I was just on this synth and on my bass, but I feel like a rock star again, a guitar rock star.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLACY WAS BORN in Compton, the California city he describes as equal parts magical and misunderstood. \u201cI don\u2019t have to worry about putting Compton on the map,\u201d he says, citing the city\u2019s history of producing legendary artists. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of negative stuff, but there\u2019s also so much positive stuff to come out of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLacy\u2019s mother is Black, and his dad was Filipino. They met at work \u2014 Lacy\u2019s mom was a nurse and his father was a handyman at the hospital where she worked \u2014 before getting married and having two kids, Steve and his younger sister. (His mother had two daughters from a previous marriage.) Lacy\u2019s parents split when he was young, and when he was 10, his father died of lung cancer. He says he never got to engage much culturally with his dad\u2019s side of his identity. \u201cIt\u2019s slipped away from me,\u201d he says. \u201cI have to rely on stories of loved ones to give me more information.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up around lots of death. It affects the way I treat life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tGrowing up in Compton with identifiably Black features, Lacy remembers friends asking him who his dad was. \u201cWhen I was younger, I just looked Black,\u201d he says. \u201cMy Filipino features came in as I got older. So I was like, \u2018Somebody\u2019s lying to me. Who the fuck is this man picking up my sister and I?\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLacy only saw his father sporadically growing up, so when he died, Lacy was unsure how to feel. He remembers crying once. \u201cIt was so abstract to me. I remember questioning how sad I could be with someone who was so occasional,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then as I grew up, I understood that there are just things that you learn from your father that I just don\u2019t have. I think the saddest part is kind of just finding out for yourself what those things are. But he still be around, though. I got a relationship with the dead. I feel him sometimes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHaving family overseas taught Lacy about different levels of poverty around the globe. Even after his father died, his mom would send money to his family in the Philippines. \u201cWe grew up in a three-bedroom with one bathroom, and we would pass up on McDonald\u2019s,\u201d he explains. \u201cShe was still communicating with [his family] via Facebook and sending MoneyGram for like 50 bucks. She\u2019s like, \u2018In the Philippines, you\u2019re rich, so you got to remember that.\u2019\u2009\u201d Lacy mentions never seeing his parents show intimacy. He sees his current relationships as \u201ctrying to, like, correct their wrongs somehow. I guess I just want to prove to myself that I\u2019m not them.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLacy comes from a musical family. His mother was once an aspiring singer and has sung background vocals on Lacy\u2019s songs, along with his sisters. <\/strong>When he was around 10 years old, Lacy started playing guitar after watching the band in his church. \u201cAt the end of the service, they would just shred, and I would sit there and watch with my jaw to the floor, not moving,\u201d he says. By then, he\u2019d already become enamored with the guitar thanks to hours playing Guitar Hero.<\/em> \u201cWhen I was 10, I was obsessed with the instrument. I wanted to touch it. I wanted to be around it. I wanted to hear it,\u201d he says. Before long, he\u2019d start lessons.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen Lacy was in high school, his mother encouraged him to join the jazz band, which he did. Around 2012, his friend and classmate Jameel Bruner (Thundercat\u2019s younger brother) would fatefully introduce him to Matt Martians and the rest of the Internet, just as Odd Future started taking off. He started hanging around the bandmates, who were all much older than him, as they rehearsed. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like the first freedom I got as a teenager because I grew up super sheltered. But my mom started to let me chill a little bit. I would go there, just watching. And I was really quiet. They called me Lil Steve.\u201d (\u201cI literally just changed his contact in my phone a couple months ago from \u2018Lil Steve,\u2019\u2009\u201d Syd tells me.)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tMartians wanted to ensure that Lacy was well positioned to launch his own career. \u201cI would start telling him, \u2018Look, we need to put together an album. Doesn\u2019t have to be long, doesn\u2019t have to be crazy, convoluted, but the world needs to be presented you by yourself,\u2019 which is why on Ego Death,<\/em> he\u2019s in the band, but I chose to put him as a feature on \u2018Palace\/Curse.\u2019 I wanted to set up that transition to him being known as his own entity.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2017, right before he turned 19, he released Steve Lacy\u2019s Demo,<\/em> recorded largely using GarageBand on a beat-up iPhone. Even early on, his songwriting skills stood out. Demo <\/em>includes the sleeper hit \u201cDark Red,\u201d a bouncy earworm that to date has racked up nearly 2 billion streams on Spotify alone and feels almost like a precursor to the equally infectious \u201cBad Habit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tJohn Troutman, chair of the Smithsonian\u2019s division of culture and the arts, heard about how Lacy recorded the EP after reading about it in Wired<\/em>. \u201cIt sounded like one of those stories that is just so incredible on so many different levels because it reflects his extraordinary talent at such a young age musically and as a producer,\u201d Troutman says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTroutman and his team were putting together an exhibit called \u201cEntertainment Nation,\u201d and they reached out to Lacy in 2017 to acquire the legendary iPhone. The show opened in 2022. \u201cWe opened right when \u2018Bad Habit\u2019 was top of the charts, so the young folks who came through knew exactly who he was and were so surprised and delighted to see the iPhone,\u201d says Krystal Klingenberg, a curator at the Smithsonian.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve seen teenagers bowing down in front of his phone,\u201d Troutman adds.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2019, Lacy sang about his queer identity for the first time, on his debut studio album, Apollo XXI.<\/em> On \u201cLike Me\u201d he opens with a sort of preamble: \u201cThis is about me and what I am\/I didn\u2019t wanna make it a big deal\/But I did wanna make a song.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLacy says he \u201ckind of waited\u201d to come out. \u201cI hid everything until I started doing things,\u201d he says. \u201cFor example, I really love dance, all styles, contemporary, tap, hip-hop. I love modern dance. But growing up, I couldn\u2019t explore that \u2019cause I never wanted anyone to call me gay before I told them I was anything, gay or whatever, you know? It\u2019d probably be easier if it were just like, \u2018I\u2019m g-word,\u2019 but I\u2019m not g-word. It\u2019s fluid, and queer is a lot harder to explain than just being a gay dude.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cFor a while, I was just on this synth and on my bass, but I feel like a rock star again, a guitar rock star.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tLacy maintains a mischievous relationship with social media. He\u2019s liberal with how much he posts to his main feed on Instagram, and he\u2019ll occasionally pop out on TikTok, posting clips using current trends or showing up in videos with popular creators. And though he hasn\u2019t been doing it so much lately, Lacy\u2019s also known to clap back in the comments. Before officially coming out, fans on Tumblr and Twitter had already put together that he was queer. After a since-deleted tweet about racial dating preferences, a full-blown hate train emerged. Lacy says he learned from the experience. \u201cI appreciate it now, I understand where it\u2019s coming from, and I have empathy for it,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember at the time it was really hard to hear,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI was just 18, that\u2019s how I came out, bro,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople found out about me kissing boys and girls from me getting canceled. But I needed that because my shit was too perfect. My little ass was gassed the fuck up. So I needed to be humbled. It was good for me.\u201d As a queer Black artist, Lacy is cautious not to position himself as any kind of spokesperson. For Lacy, it\u2019s more important that all shades of experience see the light of day. \u201cI feel like my whole mission is the humanization of Black people,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have so many spectrums of emotions. I think it\u2019s so limited when it comes to what we can watch and ingest.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat idea is part of what made Kendrick Lamar\u2019s Pop-Out concert so special for Lacy, who appeared onstage alongside a host of West Coast rappers. \u201cThat was so beautiful and profound because I think when you\u2019re in Compton, you only see one type of music being blasted. So I never expected what I was doing to be respected or a part of the conversation of what Compton is,\u201d he says. \u201cSo to be there and to feel that love and to be amongst other artists from Compton, who are doing the thing that Compton is too, was very special.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
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gassed the fuck up.
I needed to be humbled.
It was good for me.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Story-DS_RS_Final_Master-Crop_7.jpg?w=691\")
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