SAMPLEDSteve Lacy returns with 'The Feeling,' the first signal from 'Oh Yeah?'
The Internet alum re-emerges with a lean, hooded video and a July 17 album date — the first new Steve Lacy material since 'Gemini Rights'.
Steve Lacy is back on the board.
After a long quiet stretch since 2022's Gemini Rights — the record that turned "Bad Habit" into one of the defining crossover singles of the decade — the Compton-born guitarist, producer and ex-Internet utility player has shared "The Feeling," the lead single from his forthcoming album "Oh Yeah?", out July 17.
The track arrives with a video directed by Matthew Castellanos, shot at Groove Factory's Santa Monica warehouse and lit like a Renaissance altarpiece in a basement: Lacy hooded, lit from behind by a fan of orange filaments, staring down the lens like he's daring you to look away. It's a long way from the iPhone-recorded bedroom rigs of his early career, but the restraint is recognisably his — one performer, one room, a halo of bulbs doing all the talking.
What the single tells us
Lacy has historically used his lead singles as thesis statements. "Dark Red" announced the bedroom auteur. "Bad Habit" announced the pop star. "The Feeling" reads, on first listen, like an attempt to split the difference — the bassline is loose, the vocal is dry and close, and there's no obvious play for radio. Anyone bracing for Gemini Rights II will find something more interior.
The credits sheet is also a tell. Brittany Porter on production design, Luis "Panch" Perez on cinematography, Adam McClaughry editing and supervising VFX, Tyler Roth at Company 3 on the color — this is the same caliber of A-list video crew Lacy's peers in the Solange / Tyler / Internet orbit have been quietly assembling. The hoodie-and-halo image, all warm umber against pure black, is doing the same work the Gemini Rights sleeve did in 2022: telling you the album has a look before you've heard a note.
The album setup
"Oh Yeah?" lands July 17 via Lacy's usual pre-order channels. No tracklist yet, no feature list, no tour announce — just the single, the video, and the title, which reads more like a challenge than a question.
That's a deliberate rollout. Lacy and his manager Dave Airaudi have historically front-loaded singles months before the LP and then gone dark; expect a second single inside six weeks if the playbook holds.
For now: hit play on "The Feeling", and watch the throne.