Steve Lacy debuts Apollo XXI at the Fillmore

LA-based artist Steve Lacy played a sold out show at San Francisco’s Fillmore last Saturday performing his debut album, Apollo XXI (2019). Upon crunching down a Red Delicious Fillmore apple during intermission, I was ready to get doused in Lacy’s fire blend of funk, R&B, rap, hip hop, and lo-fi pop.

Steve Lacy is a multifaceted, Compton-born, African American-Filipino artist that has made his mark contributing to numerous projects across the music and fashion industries. Lacy operates with a Do-It-Yourself ethic, and is known for producing beats using his iPhone throughout his career. By the time he was twenty-one, Lacy had already scored a spot in The Internet and collaborated with highly acclaimed musicians, like Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Blood Orange, and Kali Uchis to name a few.

As with music, Steve Lacy does fashion with ease. In a GQ interview, he noted his Prada loafers as one out of ten things he cannot live without. He walked Virgil Abloh’s Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2019 collection as well as L.A.-based label No Sesso’s Fall 2019 runway shows fitted in gender neutral, structured, cropped, see-through ensembles. He rocked Margiela Tabi boots on The Internet’s 2018 Hive Mind tour, and as seen on his latest Instagram mirror-selfie, posed in his room in Gucci monogram tights paired with an oversized, pinstripe, button-down shirt.

Despite the glamour and musical stardom he has acquired as a 21-year-old, he mentions in an interview with I-D that he doesn’t see himself as any different. Lacy does not parade his achievements but simply performs for the sake of performing and celebrating his identity in style. He possessed this air of nonchalance and conviction as he stepped onto the Fillmore’s stage in a monochromatic blush-pink suit.

His first solo release, Steve Lacy’s Demo (2017), touches on the ebb and flow of romantic relationships backed with his signature style of meshing smooth bass lines, chord progressions, repetitive beats, and occasional falsettos that he describes as “plaid”. While Apollo XXI (2019) incorporates Lacy’s plaid, it’s saturated with more suggestive, catchy play on words that allude to Lacy’s personal recollections and more confrontational attitude towards his sexual fluidity.

Lacy’s Fillmore setlist, for the most part, followed the track sequence of Apollo XXI (2019) with a sprinkle of his older releases like fan-favorites “C U Girl” and “Dark Red”. Lacy began the show with the R&B track “Only If”, filled with melodic, optimistic affirmations like “But what you don’t know is the fun part of fashion / And it’s the place where I think all the fun begins,” relating his interest in bending dressing conventions with the uncertainty of everyday human life. He followed up with the nine minute, “Like Me“, a sonic manifestation of the mental and emotional loops that he has dealt with in the process of understanding his sexuality. The contemplative chorus “How many out there just like me? / How many work on self-acceptance just like me? / How many face a situation like me / I wonder, oh” especially energized the Bay Area crowd.

Each innuendo Lacy sung from more playfully lustful tracks like “N Side”, “Playground”, “Basement Jack”, only amplified the enthusiasm that permeated the venue. Lacy’s humorous take on confronting the temporariness of romance through lyricism, bolstered by the groove he emits, gives us insight into, perhaps, his state of contentedness despite the heaviness of reflecting upon past relationships. He enveloped the Bay with the celebratory spirit of Apollo XXI that night.

Steve Lacy is thriving — he is living his best life, as we all should. Though separation from a lover can feel like mutilation, Apollo XXI is a pick-me-up, as well as a reminder that you can blend the feeling with funk, play, and humor.