With his status almost cemented by the hard-to-reach Opium (a popular record label) fans and liked by the touch and go EDM community, 2hollis simply never misses.
2hollis, or Hollis Frazier-Herndon, is a Los Angeles-based electro pop and EDM producer. Starting his career under the name “Drippysoup” back in 2018 on SoundCloud, he’s already a favorite of many. He’s already created four studio albums and over a dozen singles and eps in just the past couple of years.
Rushing through the underground music scene, he’s been an opener for Ken Carson’s massive tour, ‘The Chaos Tour,’ which is an extremely tough crowd to impress, and he had fans screaming and moshing to his music.
He recently hit over one million monthly listeners on Spotify and has been touring all over America and internationally, a large milestone for someone who came to fame not too long ago.
But it seems like 2hollis came out of nowhere. He’s hardly done any interviews, rarely posts on social media, and barely promotes his music, and when he does, you don’t even know it’s him. So why, on a niche corner of the internet, are people so in love with him?
His most recent project before ‘star’ was ‘boy.’ ‘Boy’ in and of itself is a raw masterpiece of an album sampling Minecraft fireworks with addictive house music type beats. The album is the home to some of his most popular songs like ‘jeans’ and ‘crush’ so all of these songs mix in with each other, and cover topics of love, drug use, and simply a brain dump of experiences.
The only way I can describe the vibe of his music is the feeling when you taste Pop Rocks. All over the place. He places angelic songs at the beginning of the album then places rage rap songs right after; so you’re never too sure what the next song will be.
‘Star’ was something different than 2hollis’ previous works, it felt more experimental and more mature. It was less loud and in-your-face music, and more of 808s plus a raspy voice.
He tweeted just before the release of the album about the title’s meaning, explaining that his childhood home burned down during the LA fires in January, and the only thing that wasn’t burnt was a tarot card that read ‘the star.’ He made the album in that old house, making the songs seem more raw and a product of art that came from destruction.
A majority of the songs had some kind of sinister ad libs or quiet vocals like in ‘ego,’ where it’s him whispering about not caring about the past people in his life, and the second-to-last song ‘eldest child’ is raw acoustic guitar speaking about making your parents proud.
Was this album a letdown in fans’ eyes? Absolutely not, it’s something new from him, but it’s not like he completely left the rage-rap EDM music behind. ‘Tell me’ has a large beat drop and he’s basically screaming at the end of it; not to mention the absolutely insane transition between ‘ego’ and ‘sidekick.’
This album was fluid. The transitions between each song were a work of art in itself. 2hollis proved that even if he can change up his style, he still makes memorable melodies.
He may have a similar voice to Justin Bieber if he smoked eight cigarettes a day, and the overall composition and vibe of the album is top tier – I’m glad he’s getting the recognition he deserves.
