Steve Lacy Turns Vib Burnout Into a Groove on “Doom”

Steve Lacy buries the punchline in the title track’s chorus: doomsday has already arrived, and everyone’s still swiping.

“Doom” runs just under five minutes and closes out the front half of Steve Lacy‘s third studio album. Over a grungy, low-slung groove, Lacy sketches a gen that chases validation over connection, framing a hookup culture where “everybody’s fuckin’, but nobody gives a fuck ’bout love.” It’s a familiar Lacy move: bury something genuinely bleak inside a chorus catchy enough to lodge in your head for a week.

The track’s back half turns the mirror on the narrator himself, admitting he’s “had his head up his ass” and been “an asshole in the past,” before the song dissolves into a repeated, half-shouted “shut the fuck up” that reads less like anger and more like exhaustion with his own noise.

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“Doom” is track six on Oh yeah?, which arrived July 17 on RCA Records, Lacy’s first full-length since 2022’s Grammy-winning Gemini Rights. The ten-track record was written and produced entirely by Lacy, with guest turns from SZA on “is it cool?,” Erykah Badu on “pure colour,” and Cecile Believe on “lovesexdrugbomb.” Unlike those collaborative cuts, “doom” is Lacy working alone, which tracks with how interior the song’s self-criticism feels next to the album’s more outward-facing duets.

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The album follows Lacy’s 2019 debut Apollo XXI and continues a run that includes the global hit “Bad Habit” and the slow-burning streaming favorite “Dark Red.” Physical copies, including a gray vinyl pressing with a poster insert, are available through Lacy’s official store.

For more on groove, see Supah Mario Finds a New Groove Between Jazz Improvisation and Trap Precision.