Steve Lacy is an American singer, guitarist, and producer born in Compton, California in 1998, who started out making tracks on an iPhone and playing guitar in The Internet. Gemini Rights (2022) delivered the Billboard number-one Bad Habit and won the Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album — start there or with Apollo XXI. Find Steve Lacy vinyl, CDs, and reissues at Wax Trax Records.
Steve Thomas Lacy-Moya was born in Compton, California on May 23, 1998. He launched his recording career as a teenager in his Compton bedroom, producing tracks using GarageBand on iPhone (pre-iPad/laptop production approach widely cited). He joined The Internet (the Odd Future-adjacent R&B band of Syd, Matt Martians, Patrick Paige II, and Christopher Smith) as guitarist in 2015 - Lacy earned a Grammy nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album in 2016 for the band's Ego Death (2015) at age 17. He launched his solo career with the 2017 EP Steve Lacy's Demo. He has parallel production work for Kendrick Lamar (Pride track on DAMN. 2017), Solange (Don't Touch My Hair from A Seat at the Table 2016 co-write/co-production), Tyler, the Creator (multi-album collaborations), J. Cole, Vampire Weekend, and many others. His 2022 LP Gemini Rights - featuring the single Bad Habit which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 - established his commercial breakthrough. He won the Grammy Award for Best Progressive R&B Album for Gemini Rights in 2023.
Steve Lacy's sound combines R&B, neo-soul, alternative R&B, indie soul, funk, bedroom pop, alternative rock influences, and contemporary R&B with his distinctive vocal delivery, virtuosic guitar work, home/bedroom production approaches (use of mobile device production), and lyrical content addressing romance, sexuality, identity, and personal experience drawing on contemporary R&B and neo-soul traditions.
3qtr Productions, RCA Records, and L-M Records pressings of the Steve Lacy catalog have been issued in multiple color variant editions and elaborate limited deluxe pressings, with collector demand.
Listeners new to Steve Lacy typically start with Gemini Rights (2022) or Apollo XXI (2019). See also The Internet.
