"I had a group of songs that I thought were cool, but there were still things I needed to learn about myself and about music," he says.
He obsessively tweaked the songs until he realized he had to make decisions.
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Lacy describes Oh Yeah? as his most engineered and complete album yet.
It features a trip-hop track with Erykah Badu and an unrequited love song with Cecile Believe. The lyrics are noticeably less guarded, touching on personal trauma.
In the song "Is It Cool?
," he sings about his father's death when he was 10 and his Filipino heritage—topics he had never addressed before.
"I've never said anything about being Filipino ever, or anything about my dad being dead," he says, still surprised the lines came out.
Lacy connects infidelity to childhood trauma through deadpan humor. "There's a lot of comedy throughout the album but I'm covering some deep stuff," he notes.
The album also explores a past relationship that ended six years ago, which Lacy is still processing. "Oh Yeah?
is about that person—well, not that person, fuck that person! This album's inspired by that breakup," he says with a laugh.
Lacy acknowledges that trauma is memorable and that he spent years running from it. "It's still gonna pop up until you sit with that shit," he says.
Writing Oh Yeah? helped him realize that emotional safety in a relationship is more important than ego.
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"I had to get over myself," he admits.
