LOS ANGELES — "Oh — . That's Steve Lacy."

Two streetwear-dripped-out dudes on the patio of Verve Coffee nearly spit out their matchas on a recent Monday afternoon in West Hollywood, when the singer-songwriter Lacy walked up to order an iced tea.

Dressed in svelte black athleisure with a close-cropped haircut, the 28-year-old Lacy was less flamboyant than he'd looked in recent years, when he sported long braids and sunglasses that covered half his head. Only a mint green handbag and full sleeves of tattoos suggested that Gen Z's reigning rock star had settled in to talk about his new album "Oh Yeah?".

Lacy is much more famous now than he was in 2022 when he released "Bad Habit," a defining lo-fi pop song of the post-pandemic era that topped the Hot 100, earned Grammy nominations for record and song and changed his life forever. Now the Compton-reared Lacy can't go anywhere in L.A. without shifting the center of gravity in a room.

"That's funny to think about," Lacy said, when asked if he enjoys being pointed-at-in-coffee-shops-caliber famous. "I'm not about to call a restaurant and be like, 'Hey, yo, it's Steve Lacy.' But when my assistant books it, then I'm like, 'Whoa, we got this table.' Maybe my name is more famous than me. It can be annoying, but it's been very calm right now."

"Oh Yeah?" is an artful, side-eyed smirk at the pleasures and melancholy of stardom, from an artist who has remade rock and R&B for the bi-panic era. Over 10 crisp songs, Lacy asks if love is possible when your options are infinite. What to do when you want true intimacy yet know that, as he sings on one track, "If I had dollar for the friends I would f— / I could buy a pair of really nice shoes."

When Lacy toured his last album "Gemini Rights" in 2022, a fan in New Orleans threw a camera at him mid-show. It bothered Lacy, a serious artist who wrote with Kendrick Lamar and earned a Grammy nomination as a teenager in the R&B collective The Internet, suddenly thrust into living meme territory with "Bad Habit." He smashed the camera onstage.

Lacy laughs about it now, as a consequence of just how haywire that time was — for him, and everyone.

"Before that, it was just music nerds at the show, or a cool intellectual thing. The music then invited a more youthful crowd, and I had to get used to how they do things," Lacy said. "It was also a lot of kids' first times at shows, they didn't have etiquette. A lot of these kids don't know how to ... act, but I ended up enjoying their rowdiness. I do demand a certain seriousness, but I'm learning from them, and they're learning from me."

As he wrote the follow-up to the smash "Gemini Rights," he had to adapt to a new tier of fame while not losing that "cool intellectual thing," which imbued his songwriting with the Brazilian jazz chords of João Gilberto and the psychedelic soul of Erykah Badu.

He bought a flagship Jupiter 8 keyboard, but didn't end up using it much; he could afford to be "indulgent, just buying random stupid [stuff] like new instruments or clothes or cars," he said. "I was just having fun, enjoying what I had worked for. I had moments where I was like, 'This is gonna be great.' And God or whatever higher power was like, 'Now, now.' A lot of this album was a practice of 'Sit ... down.' "

Lacy doesn't come off as someone overly concerned with doing big numbers, or pandering to a newfound pop audience. But the expectations after a year-defining hit were real, if subtly disorienting. "I think it wigged me out subconsciously," he recalled. "I made an anthem. That song took me into spaces and territories that I never imagined, and so I think I felt ill prepared. But I see that song as a teacher to me. I think it's ... awesome I went No. 1, but I wasn't in my mind like 'We need to be in studio making hits.' "

The songs that emerged revealed new textures in his arrangements and a sweeping genre range, yet also his most deliciously crass humor. He deadpans through a drum and bass club banger on "Nice Shoes / In Your World," and finally nails the analog-synth richness of his beloved Stereolab on the bleary, lovelorn single "The Feeling."

"Pure Color" could be the backdrop to an ego-destroying acid trip, all blown out reverbs and trip-hop drums with Badu herself as an angel cooing from the abyss.

"It's kind of this submission to darkness that comes with grieving and missing someone," Lacy said. "I've grown up with lots of death. Cousins, my father, aunts, my grandmother. I'm grieving all of these people, but I think they visit you. The tone of that song is like 'I'm tired of feeling it right now. I want to smoke a joint. I need to get outside of myself.'"

The album revels in baser instincts too, almost in defiance of the sweetly bashful "Bad Habit." "Is It Cool?," a character study of an incorrigible cheater, sports one of his most villainous choruses — "You ain't got to trust me to love me, babe." Then SZA chimes in to say she knows exactly what she's getting involved in — "Being vulnerable is exhausting, babe / Can we get naked instead of talking?"

"Everyone hears that line and they'll be like 'Cut that ... off. This dude's ... an idiot," Lacy said. "It goes against everything that love is to everyone. But there's also deep insecurity. That dude is deeply miserable. Nothing will satisfy him. The cheater is just as insecure, if not more, than the person who's scared to get cheated on. It's kind of like admitting it, so I could get over it."

The album is also pull-off-the-road-level funny.

"There was so much laughter. Even on those days we were pulling hair out, we were laughing so loud," Lacy said of his studio sessions.

Does it matter if the LP does numbers like "Gemini Rights?" Of course Lacy wants "Oh Yeah?" to be a hit, but he's at peace with what will likely happen — an album that improves upon and broadens his artistic ambitions, and locks in his core fan base for the next phase of his career.

"The older you get, all your accomplishments are the same size," Lacy said. "My phone being in the Smithsonian, going No. 1, being Grammy nominated as a teenager, if you look at them on the wall, they're all kind of huge. But as time goes, big things happen and then it's over. I can't make my success a personality."

To that end, he has been returning home in a sense. Lacy still lives in L.A., though he recorded a chunk of the LP in Paris and has modeled for the luxury line YSL there. For the album's release, he threw a listening party at the visual artist Lauren Halsey's "Sister Dreamer" sculpture garden, a future-classical fantasia of Black mythmaking just few blocks away from SoFi Stadium and Kia Forum, but closer in spirit to his native Compton.

He's been jamming with The Internet again, his collective with childhood friends Syd and Matt Martians, who emerged from the Odd Future nexus to become a pacesetting act for young R&B and hip-hop fans. Lacy expects new music from the full band sooner or later. "It's a family. We all just love hanging out together, it's just so funny and even after we go solo, we just have this baby together," he said. "I wouldn't be here without that experience — they taught me how to do this, how to treat people."

As one of the most ambitious, genre-slippery rock stars of his era, Lacy can do anything he wants in music. Intimacy in his own life, however, is an open question.

Lacy, who is famously fluid in his sexuality and laughs off any attempt to define it, peppers his songs with dreams of men and women, of wanting each yet leaving everyone. He does want some kind of family someday, if on his terms.

"I definitely see myself as a father. I don't see myself, like, with a husband or a wife," he said. "I definitely do want a family, but I don't know about marriage and monogamy ... ."

Fans have gleefully speculated about his recent dating life, after posting a photo of a notably comfy embrace with the singer Omar Apollo, with the pithy caption "Hoes Mad." Lacy laughed and put his head in his hands when asked about the picture. He declined to elaborate on their relationship, but encouraged everyone to kiss their pals, of all genders, with the vigor of an artist who is finally, truly, free.

"I'm just in my body, bro. I kiss all my friends. I'm just having fun," Lacy said. "There's photos from YSL parties where I'm making out with everyone. That's just what I do. Make out with your friends."

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