2hollis created one of the most distressingly horny comment sections on YouTube in February when he dropped the music video for ‘Style’, in which the camera rests, unblinking, on the 21-year-old singer-producer (and apparently rapper)’s pale, lanky torso. The song has turned out to be a bit of a bait and switch – it’s not on the tracklist for ‘Star’, 2hollis’ fourth album and his first for Polydor/Interscope Records. But its cool, bratty descriptions of it-boy fame (“Hot boys, everybody wanna be us”) serve as an apt appetiser for this record’s chrome-plated vignettes of modern stardom.
Over three 2hollis albums of blown-out, post-rage electronic-pop-rap, the Chicago native born Hollis Frazier-Herndon has garnered a cult following. His fevered fandom obsesses over his production and sells out his shows from London to Shanghai in seconds. 2hollis was praised for the emotional vulnerability on his last album, 2024’s ‘Boy’, but on the sleek ‘Star’, he’s holding the hordes at a remove. “You’re now witness to something great,” he intones, cult leader-like, on the introduction.
Executive produced by 2hollis, the sole producer and writer on many of these songs (though Playboi Carti producer Jonah Abraham pops up a fair bit), ‘Star’ is his most cinematic and widescreen work yet. Clean, cavernous sound design directs all attention to his speak-sing drawl, while ear-candy sampling – such as the pitter-patter of rainfall and indulgent vrooooooms of a race car – makes for effective world-building.
Maybe this is the tasteful studio polish expected of a major label turn, but it works well: ‘Star’ throws us into a universe that feels bleak and cold like its subject, hedonistic and hollow at the same time. ‘Tell Me’ rattles with paranoia, 2hollis going from nonchalant flexing to ragged yells, demanding “just tell me, are they looking at me”. The funereal seduction ‘Girl’ is an album standout, church bells tolling as 2hollis breathlessly marvels: “You’re my girl, you’re my girl, c’mere / Necklace pearl, whisper slow, in your ear.”
Some of this might feel self-serious to restless 2hollisheads craving the incandescent zaniness of 2023’s moshpit-detonator ‘Jeans’ or 2024’s ‘Trauma’. There’s still plenty of blistering production and mind-blowing drops here – but also a winking playfulness to the theatrics. 2hollis chews the scenery on a few actorly song outros: to close ‘Burn’, he declares, “I’ve never said goodbye, and I hate my own medicine,” as girls giggle and a (white) tiger roars in the background.
On the skeletal ‘Cope’, he sings “We could be heroes” with an audacious air of detachment, yoking it to seething resentment and a silly string of car metaphors (“catch me gear me down slow speed turn me out backseat”). And what seems like a Bowie interpolation reveals itself, in the credits, to also be a sample of Alesso and Tove Lo’s bubbly, so-2014 EDM ditty ‘Heroes (we could be)’.
Eventually, we’re allowed a peek behind the curtain. It’s just 2hollis and an acoustic guitar on ‘Eldest Child’, a jumbled processing of emotions: the isolation of fame, the expectations of being the firstborn, the joy of making your parents proud. And we go out on ‘Safe’, which with its skyward synths and pleas for authentic love and companionship (“Kissing all your makeup off… Come and take your mask off me”) feels like a spiritual return to ‘Boy’, to the sun peeking through the clouds and the boy with outstretched arms, facing an infinite ocean. But after the flash and fast cars, all the play and the persona, 2hollis’ apparent return to himself feels earned.
Details
- Record label: Polydor/Interscope
- Release date: April 4, 2025