Steve Lacy used to be afraid of rock stardom.
His new album helped fix that.
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Steve Lacy is moving at high speeds.
Lacy plunders anachronistic musical scenes in the interest of bringing fans together and pursuing his own wide-ranging tastes.
The seamlessness of it all suggests a keen imagination and a deep record collection.
I can confirm Steve Lacy knows his shit.
I was like, Yo, what if thats the title of my album?
And then Jasmine gave a whole rundown of why it made sense.
But I think the more the songs formed, the more it stuck.
I never make my mind up too fast.
I can be impulsive.
I have a very fluid relationship to change.
Gemini, almost like the Joker a little bit.
I went full-blown maniac, moving my arms and my body big.
Like,Okay, Im going to tap into this character.
Ive been thinking about the long tradition of musical Geminis.
Talk about progressing from recording music on your iPhone to a laptop to a more formal studio.
Most of it was demos for other people.
I would just pitch songs for the Internet, and thats kinda all I used it for.
I didnt really plan on making my own stuff.
My process was always: Make a track, find the hook.
And then my verses would be open.
So thats how songs like Curse came about.
I had these demos, and I didnt know who they would go to.
Around the time we didThe Internet Presents: The Internet, everyone was showcasing their solo stuff.
Matt had a record.
Syd was working on one.
ThenChris.Someone was like, Steve, you should do one, too.
Thats how the demos came.
I say all that to say the iPhone thing was just ideas for me to express.
Thats all I cared about: expression.
The more that I progress as an artist, the more it becomes about executing an idea.
At first it was like,This is the idea.This is it, the demo, the raw.
But you cant keep doing that.
Its cool when you first come out cause no one expects shit from you.
I tried to kind of do the same raw, pure expression thing but not on the phone.
Working on this new record, I was still at home on my laptop, engineering and recording myself.
I felt like I hit a wall.
I dont even remember how or why.
But I was like,I want to get in the studio.
It really helped me focus and execute an idea in a totally different way.
Id been mixing and mastering everything.
I was panning my vocals.
I was doing all of that shit.
I didnt have to think about all the other shit.
I didnt have to be my own engineer.
I could just get on my instruments and be like, I want to do this right now.
Its a small thing, but it was so big to help form this record.
Is it fair to say this is a much busier and more collaborative record than the previous ones?
I havent seen it inside of a digital audio workstation, but I hear more building blocks this time.Yeah.
I definitely opened myself up to bringing people into this process.
I needed an outside voice.
I wanted to expand.
I wanted this one to sound bigger and better.
I knew that I couldnt do it by myself.
It was a beautiful realization.
The collaborators that I asked to be a part of this really helped it.
You worked with Foushee.
And did your mom and sisters sing backing vocals?
I spotted a few other Lacys in the credits.Yeah.
It was so fun.
Creativity to me is just chasing fun.
If it starts to feel not fun, if I dont smile, Im like,All right.
Dahi is someone that I respect so much.
Hes kind of my mentor.
I see him as a super-producer, like a modern-day Timbo.
His sonic landscapes are insane.
Ive been working with him since I was 17 or 18.
We met through Ezra from Vampire Weekend aroundFather of the Bride.
I forget that you sing on Sunflower.That was a dream come true.
Ezra took me in.
Im Vampire Weekends first feature ever.
Thats pretty cool cause Ive been listening to them since I was like 12, bro.
I used to watch their concerts on YouTube.
I didnt really go to live shows as a kid.
My mom was like, Im not taking you.
Im not buying you tickets.
So I would watch things online.
I was like,This is fucking crazy.
Twelve-year-old me was squealing.
One year, youre watching someone on YouTube, and the next, youre in a room with them.
Its disorienting having your life change and not understanding how differently other people are looking at you.
I latched onto the kindly dont bother me in Cody Freestyle.
I want to become closer to what connects us as humans.
just dont bother me …
The Cody is short for codependent.
I was about to ask if you made it inWyoming.Nah, I wasnt in Wyoming.
It was just a funny way to say codependent freestyle.
like dont bother me.
Dont depend on me.
I dont have, like, any expectations on what I want for people to get out of it.
When this comes out, its no longer mine.
Im very aware of that.
I like to leave my ideas very open.
Everyone has something different to say.
Even Gemini Rights is very vague.
I feel like youre owning your dualities with that title.
It lets us know up front there can be more than one interpretation.Yeah.
But very lightly, not too on the nose.
You could take it however you want.
Something that struck me this time is the feeling that youre singing more explicitly about same-sex attraction.
Was that a point of stress?
People have an easier time conceptualizing queerness when theyre thinking about the physicality of it.
Youre putting it there in the middle of the record.
Youre listing off names of guys you could be dating in the freestyle.
You got bars about the D …Thats, like, one gay song out of ten.
Okay, but we hear those stray lines and latch on.
Maybe we exaggerate in our heads.
We dont get catered to that much.
When I was writing the record, I was like, Damn, this is pretty straight.
We gotta get some gay bars in there.
I had to get the gay bars out.
Im writing to girls on there, too.
I dont want to limit whats going on in the lyrics.
He said I need to be ahead of the listener.
People already know youre going to say cough after off.
You should actually cough to create that moment.
That song came together really crazily.
How do you mean?I was really, really mad.
This was a couple weeks after the breakup.
Like, they got lunch, and I didnt notice because she house-sat for me when I was gone.
I was back home for a day or two at the time.
I was clearing up my table, and I saw this bag.
It had ceramics that I made that were in his house.
I was really pissed.
First off, why are you getting lunch with my sister?
I really, really wanted to go off.
And that was kind of a moment.
It was an opportunity to grow.
He was like, Acting like this wont be conducive to your growth, blah, blah, blah.
He wants that rise out of you, da, da, da.
I got on the fucking thing, like [hums the Static bassline].
I felt the shit in my whole body.
So I got on the piano and I was just freestyling, singing on the piano.
You were talking trash.Looking for a bitch because Im over boys.
Its like something is being reclaimed.
To me, Bad Habit sounds like New Edition making an emo song.
I didnt listen to a lot of music at the time either.
Its whatever flows through me.
I feel I take music in.
I think a lot of things I handle very internally.
So my inspiration, it kind of flows too.
And Its all very mixed.
I pull from a lot of stuff at once and I have a huge knack for juxtaposition.
I love combining different elements of music.
I listen to the pop albums that come out and I hear these artists thinking about different genres.
The album will cycle through these disparate kinds of sounds.
But when I listen to your records, I hear all these ideas mesh in the same song.
It has this big psychedelic intro but it pivots into this Raphael Saadiq-key in of funk tune.
Youre visiting all these different points in history.Thats what I love about music.
Shit is supposed to be shared, flipped, and warped.
Its an opportunity to create new shit with what weve been given.
I feel like making art or making anything benefits from a knowledge of whats been done before.
Thats what gives you the playground to do whatever the fuck and make something new.
I do study a lot of music.
I have a jazz background.
I was playing rock as a kid on the guitar.
You also played in the church?For a season, very short.
Thats enough to get the spirit in you.A little bit.
I wont say I got that much church influence.
I was the pastors nephew.
Everybody was getting paid and I wasnt getting paid.
[Laughs] My uncle, he cool.
And then wed listen to Kanye.
Everyone was listening to everything, and I appreciated that time.
Like, I know what feels good.
I dont know that much.
Jazz taught me a lot, like how to walk a bassline.
It also taught me keys and scales.
Once I had that knowledge, I was like, okay, cool.
I started to mix the jazz with the simple shit too.
That came when I started listening to Dirty Projectors.
[Dave Longstreth] made me want to mix all types of shit.
I actually stole a melody from him.
I met him, and he said he liked Dark Red.
I was like, Im happy you like it.
I actually stole one of your melodies.
Sometimes Ill catch it way later.
What are the records that inspired you early on?
You playedGuitar Hero, right?
Theres a point in the 2000s where video game soundtracks start blowing everyones taste to smithereens.
Suddenly you could get an education about indie rap or punk rock from a game.
Its really crazy to think about what sprouts from there over the next two decades.Even theMaddensoundtracks.
Thats how I take music in.Guitar Herodefinitely put me onto a bunch of music I would never know about.
I think it was at the time I was like falling in love with the guitar.
I would see guitars, and Id just want to touch them.
I went to Guitar Center before I could even play.
Which guitarists do you look up to?Jimi Hendrix.
Jarris Mosey, the dude who taught me.
Those are the first ones that come to mind.
Do you listen to Todd Rundgren?Yeah, of course.
But that came later.
There are certain wavy textures in your songs that remind me of his stuff.Mac DeMarco as well.
I want to ask about a specific session.
I forgot that you played guitar onJet Fueloff Mac MillersSwimming, a song I think about a lot.
Do you have any memories of that experience?That beat actually came from a Kendrick Lamar session.
He has all these different drum loops.
He had that loop, and I did that groove, but Dot didnt use it.
Dahi just collects stuff.
I guess Malcolm was working on his record and he liked the beat that became Jet Fuel.
Mac was one of the first big people to fuck with me.
He was just a rad spirit bro.
We spent a lot of time together.
He wanted to make music, and he liked some of my first ideas.
I was, like, Damn, thats crazy!
I was still going to school and shit at that time.
He was huge to a lot of my peers, but I didnt say anything.
Theres a song onThe Lo-FiscalledDaze.I have a version with him on it.
He loved my production, and hed always send me drums and wed work together.
I think this is your best record yet.
I think I used to be afraid of something like this happening to me.
But now Im like, No, its going to be good.
Im just judging it on how I feel about it.
I know if I feel good about it, then it can only be received good.
I put a lot of time and effort into it.
I got a question for you, the interviewer.
What genre would you place the album under?
I need to know.
So Im curious what you would say.
I would slide it into indie rock and let it intrigue people on that side.
R&B fans are hardwired to get the boundary breaking and the fusion of rock and soul.
I dont know that indie rock kids come up on slick stuff like Amber.
Well, that has a bit of Beatles.
Do you listen to the Beatles?Of course, man.
I have to ask.
Some people hate the canon.
He was the youngest one.
He was always on the search for consciousness, and he put them onto all the hippie shit.
Are you the hippie of The Internet?Definitely.
Then I heardArrow Through Me,and… maybe its Paul.
Everyone loves the classic McCartney records but Im getting more into the stranger, off-peak stuff.
The 1979 album withArrow Through Mehad gems.
Late-period Wings never gets its due.The music in all the years ending in nines is always crazy.
69, 79, even 2019.
1989, a classic.
Thanks for nerding out about music.
I needed to when I heard the new album.Im a music geek.
Im a band geek at the end of the day.
Like always and forever.
I just enjoyed writing more than practicing an instrument.As a band geek in school, nobody gives a damn.
People, even the staff and administrators, care about the math and science kids and the athletes.
There are so many school music programs dying right now.Its so sad.
You cant fuck with the music program.
That shits so important.
I feel like its going to fall on the kids to pick it up themselves.
They have the technology.
And pick the shit up.
You mapped out the taxonomy of guys I see your art descending from.I appreciate it.
Like the Princes, the Rick Jameses, the Saadiqs, the DAngelos.
Thats the key in of rock star I want to be.
Its not rock because theyre playing rock.
Its rock cause theyre unapologetically making shit and delivering it to you confidently.
Thats the path Im on.
I want to do what theyre doing.
Its the C12 mask.
I found a pair when I was looking for my outfit at Coachella.
I decided I was running with it.
I got, like, four pairs now.
