Steve Lacy Revisits His 'Apollo XXI' Album for New "Playground" Visual

With several high-profile live performances ahead of him, The Internet musician Steve Lacy is revisiting his recent solo album for his latest visual release. Specifically, the talented young Compton native links up with producers Kathleen Heffernan and Leah Younesi for the official music video in support of one of Apollo XXI‘s opening salvos, “Playground.”

Originally released as one of Apollo XXI‘s singles, “Playground” serves as one of that project’s 12 solo compositions and was primarily inspired by the legendary work of Prince.

“I think this was in my Prince phase, where I was all Prince, but I also have my Dirty Projectors phase in there,” Steve Lacy revealed to Zane Lowe, opening up about the sonic direction of “Playground” and its origins for an episode of Lowe’s Beats 1 program. “It came with that riff, and then the hook came, and … I wrote the verses in that month, so I held on to that hook and everything for a while before I actually wrote the song.”

“It takes a while to… I call it ‘get into my groove.’ That takes days at a time of just being at home experimenting with sounds,” Steve Lacy explained to SSENSE earlier this month, sharing some insight into his creative process. “Once I get into my groove, then I can kill shit.”

“What inspires me is living real life,” Lacy added. “Going through actual shit. It could be small things too. Anything, like good music, good art. I’m not blocked into one thing I’m inspired by. I like to fuse inspirations into one big thing … My sound is just like a plaid shirt of different shit that I pull, and shit I’m inspired by.”

You can take a look at Steve Lacy’s new music video for “Playground” above.