Oh Yeah, Steve Lacy Brings His New Album to Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall does not do small. It sits at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, the stage swallows whole productions, and tonight the show starts at 8. Tonight the room belongs to a guitarist who made his name on an iPhone.

Steve Lacy plays Radio City on Saturday, October 10, on the Oh yeah? Tour, according to Live Nation's event listing. The show is all ages, mxdwn reports. It is built around the album that came out on July 17, his third full-length, and it is the kind of New York night where the size of the building and the size of the songs do not match, which is exactly the fun of it.

From Compton to Sixth Avenue

Lacy grew up in Compton, California, and started on guitar at seven, mxdwn notes. He joined the band The Internet in 2015 and produced on its album Ego Death, which earned a Grammy nomination. His solo debut Apollo XXI in 2019 was nominated for Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 62nd Grammys. Then came Gemini Rights in 2022, which contained Bad Habit, the song that reached number one on six Billboard charts at once, mxdwn reports. Rolling Stone, quoted by the outlet, called him "one of his era's defining pop auteurs."

That is a lot of career for someone who is still in his twenties and still best known for songs that feel intimate. The scale of the venue is the story. A Radio City crowd is a long way from the bedroom.

The Record

Oh yeah? is a ten-track album. Stereogum's Chris DeVille calls it "one of the most purely enjoyable albums of the year" and hears polish that still moves loosely. He names Frank Ocean's Blonde as the clearest precursor and is hard on the lyrics, which he says made him wince. The album features SZA on "is it cool" and Erykah Badu on "pure color," which leans on a trip-hop beat and a sampled new age track called Root Chakra. Stereogum also credits Cecile Believe on "lovesexdrugbomb," a song co-written with Tyler, the Creator, and Fousheé as a co-writer on "bebe."

One of the most purely enjoyable albums of the year.

Clash gave it 8 out of 10. Its reviewer, Shahzaib Hussain, called it "a work just shy of a true classic" and praised the textural production, the guitar phrasing and what he described as concise, confronting wordplay. Much of the record was made in Paris during a stretch of enforced sobriety, according to the review. The title track moves from eerie synths to a surf-rock strum. "show you me" is an acoustic ballad. "new shoes / in your world" shifts between breakbeats and slow funk.

The record debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200 and number 3 on the Top R&B Albums chart, mxdwn says, and its SZA duet "is it cool" entered the Hot 100 at number 52.

What to Expect Under the Chandeliers

A room this size says how far the guitarist has traveled from the demos.

Radio City is a room for surprise. The old Art Deco hall gives a quiet song room to ring and a loud one room to roar. Lacy's catalog is made for that swing. A tune like "pure color" can turn from lazy to trippy in a few bars.

Radio City is also an old-fashioned kind of room, with a lot of seats and a lot of ceiling, and it has a way of making a quiet song feel like an event. The all-ages policy matters here too. A show like this is where a teenager sees their first big night out in New York, and the thing they will remember is not the setlist but the feeling of a whole room singing at the same time. Expect the new album to be the center of gravity.

New York has had a long run of grand rooms and big nights lately. For another, read about the Strokes coming home to Queens. Saturday at Radio City is a different crowd and a different kind of homecoming.

Whatever the set, the question in the tour name is the right one. Lacy asks it. Sixth Avenue answers.