Compton, CA · alt-r&b · funk

Steve Lacy

1 upcoming festival

The Internet's guitarist turned Grammy-winning solo star — home-cooked funk and heartsick guitar pop that made 'Bad Habit' inescapable.

Steve Lacy was born Steve Thomas Lacy-Moya in Compton, California, in 1998, to a Black American mother and a Filipino father who was largely absent and died when Lacy was ten. He picked up guitar at seven after playing Guitar Hero, and met future Internet bandmate Jameel Bruner in his high school jazz band before joining the Los Angeles group The Internet as a teenager, playing guitar on their album Ego Death.

Lacy built his early reputation recording largely on an iPhone, using GarageBand and a simple interface; that method carried into outside production work, including co-producing 'Pride' on Kendrick Lamar's DAMN and writing for Solange. He also guested alongside Frank Ocean on Tyler, the Creator's 'Mr. Lonely / 911,' later certified double platinum, and appeared on Vampire Weekend's 'Sunflower' and Calvin Harris's 'Live Without Your Love,' a UK chart entry.

His own records began with 2017's Steve Lacy's Demo, followed by Apollo XXI, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album. Gemini Rights arrived in 2022, reaching the top ten of the Billboard 200 and producing the single 'Bad Habit,' which went viral on TikTok and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100; the album won the Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album, while the single collected three further nominations.

The music leans on loose funk guitar, falsetto vocals and bedroom-scale production, with songwriting that tends toward the wry and the romantically unsettled. In 2023, Time named him one of the world's 100 most influential people. His third album, Oh Yeah?, arrived in 2026 with collaborations from SZA and Erykah Badu.

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alt-r&bfunk