Oh yeah?
Steve Lacy · Alternative R&B
“You flew to Paris to record an album and came back with a line about coochie stuck in your teeth.”
You made one of the best sounding records of the year and then wrote words on it. That is the whole review. Ten tracks, thirty nine minutes, self-produced, and the actual music is gorgeous: the guitar playing is loose and warm, the sequencing flows like one continuous thought, and you move between bedroom funk and full band swagger without ever sounding like you are trying on costumes. Stereogum called it a fully realized work and one of the most purely enjoyable albums of the year. They are right. Then the same review had to add that your lyrics are consistently terrible, and they are right about that too. Here is your problem, Steve. You have grown into a genuinely serious producer and arranger, and your writing is still operating at the level of a group chat at two in the morning. You have SZA on one track, Erykah Badu on another, Cecile Believe on a third. Erykah Badu. You brought in one of the great lyricists in modern soul and then handed the room a line about a big baby and karma being a bitch. That is not provocation. That is a man who found a rhyme and could not bear to lose it. The frustrating part is that you can clearly do it. On nice shoes you write that life is but a stain and not a tattoo, that it is lame to chase youth, and suddenly there is a whole person in the song. That is a real thought, delivered plainly, and it lands harder than anything else on the record. You are not incapable of writing. You are just not editing. Somewhere in your process there is a moment where you decide the first thing you said was funny enough, and that moment is costing you a classic.
This is a very good album and I want that stated flatly, because the lyric problem is easy to dunk on and the achievement is harder to describe. The production is fluid, the guitar tone is genuinely yours, and at thirty nine minutes across ten tracks you have made the increasingly rare thing: a record with no filler and no bloat, that ends before you are done with it. Rolling Stone calling you one of Gen Z's defining pop auteurs is not hype, it is just what the tape sounds like. Clash said it is a work just shy of a true classic. The gap between this and a classic is not talent, budget, or ambition. It is roughly forty five minutes with a pen and a willingness to cross things out.
The shock line is doing the work of an actual idea
“From doom: "I'm a big baby suckin' on big titties / Karma's a bitch, and I bet she's pretty". Stereogum's Chris DeVille flagged it directly, writing that he had not winced this much listening to an otherwise-excellent album since Kanye was at his peak.”
The fix Every time you reach for a shock image, write the boring version of the line underneath it and compare. If the boring version says more about you, keep the boring version. Shock is a texture, not a thesis.
Filler phrasing inside your most emotional moments
“"I don't wanna cheat no more, be no whore / I would rather be the one that you tell your mom about and stuff". You built to a confession and then closed it with "and stuff", which detonates the sincerity of the entire couplet.”
The fix Ban filler tails from vulnerable lines. If a line needs a cushion at the end, you have not committed to the feeling yet. Sing it plain and let it be uncomfortable.
Elite features, undercooked writing to hand them
“SZA on is it cool?, Erykah Badu on pure colour, Cecile Believe on lovesexdrugbomb. Three of the most distinctive voices available to you, on a record whose near-unanimous critical complaint is the quality of the words.”
The fix Write the feature verses last, after you have found what the album is about. Guests should be arriving into a finished thought, not decorating an unfinished one.
You already know what your best writing sounds like
“From nice shoes: "Life is but a stain, it's not a tattoo / It's lame to chase youth." It is the most quoted lyric on the record and the plainest, with no shock image anywhere near it.”
The fix Take that couplet, pin it above the desk, and use it as the bar. Any line that would embarrass you next to it does not make the album.
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