Filipino-American R&B singer-songwriter Steve Lacy has announced his new album Oh Yeah with a release date to be announced, unveiling its first single, “Nice Shoes” that came out on August 15. The news was revealed in his September 2025 Rolling Stone cover story, written by Jeff Ihaza and photographed by Daniel Sannwald, where Lacy previewed the track while en route to his Yves Saint Laurent fashion show appearance. The single, he explained, reflects what he has been working on in recent months.
Lacy’s rise in the last decade has been striking. His 2022 album Gemini Rights propelled him into global recognition, largely driven by the runaway success of “Bad Habit,” which became a trend on social media, cementing his place in mainstream pop culture. It was a long way from his early days recording on a cracked iPhone using GarageBand in 2016, or his breakthrough collaboration with Kendrick Lamar on DAMN. the following year. Before his solo success, Lacy was the guitarist for Los Angeles R&B collective The Internet, working alongside Odd Future alumni Matt Martians and Syd.
In his Rolling Stone interview, Lacy pushed back on the idea that platforms like TikTok have shortened listeners’ attention spans. “I think people gravitate toward the strongest moments of things,” he says in the interview. “I find a lot of music today online. I don’t really believe in the whole attention-span conversation.”
“Nice Shoes” leans on sharp breakbeat rhythms, with rapid-fire snare and kick patterns under Lacy’s hypnotic refrain of “Make it stop.” The energy mirrors the single’s spontaneous debut whereas he played from his phone in a moving car. For Oh Yeah, Lacy said the project marks a creative shift, noting that it’s his first time being deliberate with his lyric writing.
“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 says. “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.’”
With Oh Yeah on the horizon, Steve Lacy enters a new phase — still rooted in the bold sonic experimentation that defined his rise, but now with an added focus on telling his story in his own words.
