steve lacy has released “The Feeling” with a Matthew Castellanos-directed video, and the single now leads the rollout for Oh Yeah?, his third album, out next month. It is his first single of 2026, arriving after nearly four years since Gemini Rights.
Oh Yeah? after Gemini Rights
The new album cycle carries more weight than a routine single drop. Gemini Rights earned Lacy a Grammy Award for Best Progressive R&B Album in 2023 and included “Bad Habit,” his biggest hit so far, so any new release arrives under a higher commercial and creative standard than Apollo XXI did in 2019.
Lacy has been signaling that shift since October 2025, when he released “Nice Shoes” and said it introduced a “new era” in his career. He added, “This one has taken a lot of time and thought,” and, “I keep using the word ‘design.’ It feels like fully designing a new language for myself.”
Castellanos in the dark
Castellanos’ video opens with Lacy’s floating head in pitch darkness, then moves through him strumming an acoustic guitar in an empty room, singing in front of a sparkler, and posing shirtless against psychedelic backdrops. Those shifts give the rollout a visual identity instead of a plain audio release, which is the point when an artist is introducing a new album era before the record itself arrives.
The release also answers the most practical question for listeners: Lacy is not holding the material for the album launch. He is using “The Feeling” now, as the first single of 2026, to set the frame for Oh Yeah? before next month’s release window.
Lacy's 2026 start
For a musician coming off a Grammy-winning album and a nearly four-year gap, that sequence matters. Lacy is not restarting from scratch; he is extending a run that moved from Apollo XXI in 2019 to Gemini Rights in 2023, then into a self-produced third album cycle that now has both a song and a video attached to it.
The next move belongs to Oh Yeah?, and this release makes the strategy plain: Lacy is spending the first part of 2026 building attention around the album before it lands next month.
