‘On some frontal lobe shit’: Steve Lacy and Solange go head-to-head

This story is taken from the autumn 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from September 11. Pre-order a copy here.

Steve Lacy and Solange Knowles are so close they speak once a week. Hearing the two in conversation, it’s easy to see why: the warmth and synergy between them is palpable. You can feel it in My Skin My Logo, a song on Solange’s album When I Get Home. Lacy, who collaborated with Solange on the record, holds it down on bass, giving her a soulful foundation as she trades verses with Gucci Mane, her voice melding seamlessly with Lacy’s hypnotic groove.

Both Lacy and Solange create work that resists easy categorisation. Borrowing freely from jazz, funk, soul and R&B, they combine these influences to craft sonic worlds entirely their own. There’s an undeniable realness in how both artists express themselves – Lacy with his love of dress-up, Solange with her interest in spirituality and the avant-garde. Both are design nerds, too; the cover of Lacy’s album Apollo XXI featured a couch designed by Danish architect Verner Panton, while Solange has released furniture and interior objects through her studio, Saint Heron.

For this issue, the two visionaries reunited for an intimate conversation about Lacy’s forthcoming third studio album, Oh Yeah?, which he is calling his most daring work to date. Though Solange was mid-move and Lacy Zoomed in late from Paris, they dived in with ease, speaking candidly about Instagram, “break-up psychosis” and impostor syndrome.

Solange: Some of my early memories of us are working on When I Get Home. We had a really lovely session. I remember knowing that you are revered as a guitar hero, but intuitively being like, “I want you on the bass.”

Steve Lacy: You’ve acknowledged pieces of me that no one else sees. It was really special to be seen in that way, because I’ve done bass lines on my music and the Internet’s music. But no one really knows unless you’re digging up credits. It was cool to be used in that way.

Solange: You jumped in without me having to prompt much. That was one of the first moments I was like, “OK, there’s a synergy between us that’s unspoken. We don’t have to say much. We see one another and we understand one another.” That expanded into friendship and sister-brotherhood. I really wanted to talk about evolution, having had the honour of hearing your new album. Although the chords are identifiably you, I feel like the tone has evolved. As someone who started making work around the same age I did, what has that evolution been like? Has it felt really natural? Slow? Abrupt?

Steve Lacy: It’s been super-moderate, which is something I’m grateful for because I went through a gassed-up period. When you’re a teenager, the language around your good ideas is “this kid’s a genius” or “wunderkind”. When I dropped my first project as a soloist, those words got to my head. I’m grateful I went through that then, because now I know how to synthesise and process the information on my terms. I feel like I’m exactly where I should be. I stay close to my work. We talk about this a lot; we lead with our work. I want the work to get into your veins before you know I did it.

I’m pushing myself to talk about subjects I’ve never talked about before – Steve Lacy

Solange: I’ve been thinking a lot about screw [a genre of hip hop, hailing from Houston, that involves remixing and slowing down the tempo] and it being this revolutionary sonic landscape that’s been referenced for 20, 30 years. People have a relationship to it in a certain time, but for me screw never dies. It’s always relevant, urgent, important. It’s never a trend, never a fad. I’ve been thinking a lot about it as a lifestyle.

I remember reading this quote from [curator and writer] Legacy Russell about how Black people deserve slowness and to not be creating at the speed that is demanded of us. When I’m moving too fast, I picture myself screwed, just walking through life very intentionally, slowly, being able to see things around me before I act. I wanted to ask you about time and what your relationship is to time. Between your last project and now, what has life been like?

Steve Lacy: Me and time are friends who speak every now and then, but we stay close. Time has been an indicator of how I view myself and my career. My biggest song [Dark Red] blew up five years later. When that happened, it gave me trust in my timing. Managers and publicists have their own visions of where you should be at certain times. But I stay close to my intuition and my timing. I want to be able to play this music and love it forever. I feel like time has been on my side since I was a kid, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Solange: I had the honour and privilege, on When I Get Home, to have you and your sisters singing on it. I would love for you to paint a picture of the foundation they’ve laid for you, artistically, outside of your love for them.

Steve Lacy: I grew up very close to my mother, sister and family. Whenever I’m thinking too hard about what fame is or being a celebrity, I just go hang out with my sister or my nephew and I’m reminded of what actually matters. I know, from my Cancer sister, how to read a person, how to read a room. I feel super-indebted to them

Solange: Whenever I’m around your mom or your sisters, I see all the best of you. You have a lot of incredible women who surround you, and you love out loud the women in your life. It’s a joy to be on the other side of that. People say this word “community” everywhere you turn, but very few are willing to use their own platform to love on others out loud and step out of their perceptions of cool. Instagram can be such a wretched app, and you’ve made this intentional effort to alleviate the tone of how we’re engaging with one another. I’m wondering how that’s showing up in other ways?

Steve Lacy: It’s funny that this is the Uncensored issue, because that’s the tone of everything I’m doing right now. I’m trying to flip everything upside down in terms of how I promote this album. I made up this term, “breakup psychosis”. I was in the heat of writing and then I went through a breakup. I was just posting, and at first it was such a rush, especially to get over the “like” system. It was inspiring and it made me more free. It made me feel how I felt when I first started making music. Now I’m trying to find the raw version of myself. This rawness and openness that I’m finding right now is so beautiful, and I hope to share that with everybody. Like, come on, break out of it! I told you: post, who cares? Post three times a day!

Solange: You sure did. And it’s reverberated, not just on IG, but in life. Being able to have that rawness in the exposure and showing up fully in how you feel, and knowing that it’s not for life. It’s a marker of time and of a moment that doesn’t have to follow us forever. With your lyrics and what I’ve heard so far, that’s been my favourite part, the punk-ness and being able to say exactly what it is that you feel in that moment’s time. Obviously, as writers, there’s a sentiment of poetry we try to bring into the process, but there’s also poetry in whatever rolls off tongue. I wanted to talk about your evolution with design.

Steve Lacy: I’m a closeted design person.

This album is definitely on some frontal lobe shit – Steve Lacy

Solange: Not so closeted to me. If you’ve got two design collaborations under your belt, between Bose and Fendi, that’s not feeling very closeted to me. I think you can add design confidently to the CV. It’s refreshing to see you having fun within your design language and keeping that same sentiment of impulsivity, even with your merch. I’d love to hear how, in this very black-and-white, minimalist world, you see yourself fitting in and what the expression of your designs are.

Steve Lacy: It’s something I’ve always innately had, but never thought of for myself. I just lived with it. Over the past two years, I’ve been trying my best to make things that are built to last, with the impulsivity and the fun that I feel right now. I love that I get to talk to you as a freshman in the design world. It’s really cool to pick your brain; it still feels super-fresh to me. I still feel like I can’t call myself anything yet. I’m happy you get to see the development of my furniture creations. It’s been feeding into my music process. My consideration for things since I’ve started designing objects has grown so much higher, even how I write songs.

Solange: I used to struggle with impostor syndrome in calling myself a designer. But a designer is just someone who creates functional concepts, and we’re all equipped to do that. Design to me is really just about everybody’s individual contributions and making the world a more beautiful, sensible and functional place. We can all call each other and ourselves designers and architects of our own world. I’ve seen you expand your activities quite a bit since fake-moving to Paris. I want to talk about this Paris love affair. As Black artists, it’s a rite of passage. I know you’ve been back and forth there for a while. I’ve been wondering, because I last heard the record pre-your Paris time, how that’s impacted [your] sound, lyrics and voice.

Steve Lacy: This year is the first time I’ve been coming here for no reason, for extended stays. I found this silence in my brain. I was walking around here maybe two trips ago and I remember feeling, in my body and my soul, like it was the first time I didn’t feel the pressure of what I needed to execute next. There was this feeling of gratitude. It was also the walkability of everything, because I’m a California dude and I drive everywhere I go. But in Paris, I can walk and see things for free. I can sit in a park. It’s a different brain I don’t have access to when I’m in California because I grew up in a totally different way.

Solange: I would love to hear how [the album] has evolved since I heard it last.

Steve Lacy: It’s definitely been pushed sonically. The elements are a little bit more electronic, but it’s still some guitar shit. I’m talking like I never talked before, which is really, really fun. There are some bars on there that make me feel embarrassed. I feel like my mom is showing someone a photo of me when I was three doing some stupid shit. There are some bars that make me blush like that. But I have to say it. It feels like I’m pushing myself to talk about certain subjects I’ve never talked about before. This one is definitely on some frontal lobe shit, like I got to say this. It’s probably the least romantic thing I’ve ever made. It definitely feels like my grown album. It’s got something for everybody.

I’m so about balance. You know when you’re in a space and there are too many types of person there? Whether it’s not enough women, not enough Black people or not enough gay people. I feel like, with whatever I do, I like to have everyone there together. That’s my whole theory and philosophy on life – everybody together, and respect it. That’s the energy of this album. There’s something for everybody.

There’s a lot of things we’re “supposed” to be talking about as people that sit in the intersectionality of the system, but I’d rather just put it into the work for you to feel. So that’s what I’m saying. I’m standing on those things hard.

Hair Ronnie McCoy III, make-up Alexa Hernandez at The Wall Group using Nars, set design Sati Leonne at Bryant Artists, lighting Paul Jedwab, photographic assistant Achraf Issami, styling assistants Moni Jiang, Aroua Ammari, Camilla Poce, Asya Andreatta, Emma Hockenhull, Isabella Magee, set design assistant Coline Robert, production Rachael Evans at Repro Agency, production assistant Meron Ayele, casting gk-ld