If you’re not terminally online, keeping up with music’s new guard can feel impossible. New stars flash into the mainstream still slightly pixelated, glitching and tethered to the underground pits they rose from. No exception to that rule is the internet’s elvish prince, 2hollis – real name Hollis Frazier-Herndon – whose music has been tunnelling into the eardrums of cool kids the world over for the past few years.

Known for his crushing EDM-trap-rap and bone-rattling production, Hollis stacks chaotic, emotional distortion onto basslines built to blow out just about any soundsystem they burrow into. Essentially, it's music production if it necked a bottle of Elvanese and locked the fuck in. So if you're new to his game, or want a refresher, here's the 2hollis starter pack to get you up to speed on the latest Dazed cover star.

SOCIAL MEDIA

An obvious one no doubt, but Hollis has been vocal about growing up tethered to the digital world; after all, this is a guy who cites Minecraft as one of his biggest inspirations. After being gifted Ableton Live music production software as an 11th birthday gift from his parents, Hollis learned how to use it by browsing Reddit, Discord, and YouTube.

Later releasing under the now-retired alias Drippysoup in 2018, Hollis’s ascent into stardom is inseparable from the internet. His glitchy beats and EDM-rage snippets, primed for TikTok clips and grid posts, began to swell into a devout audience during the pandemic. It’s a relationship that the artist has been vocal about, acknowledging the internet’s role in catalysing his fame but also its toxicity and ability to flatten art. In his Dazed cover story, he suggested that the internet had in some ways been a “bad parent” to him.

SYMBOLISM

Look across 2hollis’ discography and you’ll find symbolism everywhere. To begin with, the “2” in his moniker is a number he’s said has appeared persistently throughout his life since high school. Then there’s the text-talk love heart flipped into his own shorthand, “2>”, stamped across merch and visuals. The cover of his album star is layered with the Flower of Life – the geometric pattern often described as a blueprint for creation. Then, digging further back into his Hollis-coded world, there’s a singular plus sign that populates two projects, and an emoji-adjacent spiel of symbols that feel in need of an IOS update on his 2023 EP whiplash/cliche. 

THE HAIR

“Hair can make or break your aura – 2hollis vs 2hollister,” as one viral TikTok put it. 2hollis has become synonymous with his chest-length, bleached-blonde hair (yes, it’s a wig), often paired with a chiselled six-pack and occasionally experimental or black line eye makeup. The look pushes him firmly into fantasy-LARP, EDM-elf territory.

A STAR-STUDDED UPBRINGING

Dig into 2hollis’s footprint, and you will find an appearance in a Skrillex video at age 12, a meeting with Justin Bieber in the pop star’s One Less Lonely Girl era, and a few more star-studded encounters from a childhood spent backstage. These aren’t exactly chance occurrences, with Hollis’s dad being a musician and his mum, Kathryn Frazier, being the founder of a PR firm and co-founder (with Skrillex) of record label OWSLA. Maybe it was written in the stars (the ones already around him), but Hollis has been vocal about his upbringing around the industry while making clear that the pursuit was always his own.

THE SOUND

It wouldn’t be a starter pack without some direction on where to actually begin. Sure, there’s probably a Reddit thread somewhere with the sacred Drippysoup files archived by a die-hard fan, but if you’re starting from scratch, his most popular tracks are popular for a reason.

His sound is best described as a high-speed collision of genres: sugary EDM, hyperpop gloss, flickers of PC Music sheen, melodic rage rap and digicore distortion – and that’s only scratching the surface.

The internet’s self-appointed messiah first pulled serious attention with 2022’s White Tiger, before singles like “crush” and “jeans” rode the algorithm into wider rotation. His latest album, Star, leans further into maximalism, with breakout tracks “flash” and “sidekick”.

If you need a starting point, check out “crush”, “teenage soldier”, “sidekick” and “trust”.