Steve Lacy feat. SZA – Is It Cool? [Audio]

Steve Lacy links with SZA on “is it cool?,” a loose, intimate duet from his upcoming album Oh yeah?.

Steve Lacy keeps the title lowercase and the feeling complicated on “is it cool?” The new SZA-assisted track moves like a private conversation that accidentally turned into a duet, with both artists circling the same emotional knot from different angles.

The song appears on Lacy’s upcoming album Oh yeah?, due July 17, and it fits neatly into the world he has been sketching since “Nice Shoes” and “the feeling.” The groove is loose and warm, but the writing is full of hesitation: attraction, self-sabotage, mixed signals, and the strange little pauses that come before someone says too much or not enough. Lacy leaves space in the record instead of crowding it, letting the guitar, bass, and vocal pockets do most of the work.

SZA makes the collaboration feel conversational rather than ornamental. She does not arrive to overpower the track; she bends into its mood, answering Lacy’s uncertainty with the kind of phrasing that makes vulnerability sound both casual and impossible to shake. Together, they turn “is it cool?” into something softer than a confession and more unsettled than a flirt.

With Oh yeah? also set to feature Erykah Badu and Cecile Believe, “is it cool?” adds another strong hint that Lacy is building the album around chemistry, texture, and tension rather than chasing a clean repeat of Gemini Rights. The song does not force a big moment. It lets the awkwardness breathe, and that is where it works.