Steve Lacy has never seemed particularly interested in staying inside the lines others have drawn around him. On Oh yeah?, his third album and first since the Grammy-winning Gemini Rights, the Compton-born musician blows those lines away entirely. Self-produced and clearly personal, the record finds Lacy stretching pop, alternative and R&B into something that sounds like it began by fusing genres then morphed into a genre all its own.

The stakes are high. Lacy already has two entries in Spotify’s Billions Club, thanks to the billion-streaming “Dark Red” and global smash “Bad Habit,” the latter earning him his first Grammy. But Oh yeah? isn’t about sticking to the formula. Instead, Lacy uses his success as a launchpad, building a restless, shape-shifting album around guitars, synthesizers, elastic rhythms and lyrics that fully open the curtains leaving nothing to hide. The acclaimed lead single “the feeling” offered the first glimpse of this new chapter, reconnecting listeners with Lacy’s knack for making the strange immediately accessible. The album goes further, with “is it cool?” featuring SZA among its bigger moments. Erykah Badu and Cecile Believe also contribute to a record that feels wide-reaching without ever losing Lacy’s fingerprints.

Oh yeah? is an album for guitar kids who love synths and synth kids who love guitars. There’s comedy and tragedy here, sometimes occupying the same song, all contained within an increasingly distinct universe of sound. That universe belongs unmistakably to Lacy, now 28 and nearly a decade removed from his first EP. Along the way, he’s collaborated and shared stages with Kendrick Lamar and Solange, sold out venues around the world and developed a visual identity as adventurous as his music.

The Cut once floated the idea of Lacy as “potentially being Gen Z’s first rock star.” Oh yeah? sounds like the moment that potential stops being theoretical. In an era crowded with pop maximalists, K-pop phenomena and country traditionalists, Lacy arrives at something harder to manufacture: an identity that feels entirely his own. The question mark in Oh yeah? may suggest uncertainty. The music suggests anything but.