2HOLLIS - Star

Hollis Parker Frazier-Herndon comes from a family steeped in music. His father, John Herndon, is known as the drummer and founding member of Tortoise, an institution of the post-rock scene. His mother, Kathryn Frazier, is among other things co-founder of the record label Owsla, so another industry insider.
Hollis was born in Chicago in 2004, and after his first steps under the pseudonym Drippysoup, drawn by a fascination with medieval fantasy he fell in with the "medieval trap" scene alongside the band Open Swords Of Ten. In the post-pandemic period he decided to rebrand himself as 2hollys, drawing attention with the release of his self-produced debut album "White Tiger" (August 2022), and even more so with a song, "Poster Boy", which was included in the soundtrack of the video game EA Sports FC 24, effectively becoming the first hit for the American producer and singer. A flood of singles followed (among the most popular "Crush" and "Jeans"), a dense string of EPs and mixtapes, and above all two albums: "2" (May 2023) and "Boy" (June 2024), which sent his popularity soaring.

At that point Interscope caught wind of the hype while it was still in its embryonic stage, and proved quickest to sign the Chicago artist. "Star", released in April 2025, thus became the first 2hollis album to come out on a label, and the young artist, propelled by a far more defined promotional push, finally broke through internationally, becoming a fixture at major music festivals and racking up sold-out show after sold-out show across the globe, from the United States to Australia.
All this thanks to songwriting able to capture Gen Z audiences, the result of a stylistic blend that fuses the pop of Justin Bieber ("Flash", "Nice") with the trap of Travis Scott ("Burn", "Girl"), hip-hop ("Ego"), pc music (tracks like "You", "Destroy Me" and "Dream Rain Sports" make him something of a male counterpart to Charli XCX) and EDM (the second half of "Tell Me"). His songs are packed with overwhelming drops and decisive melodic hooks, domineering basslines and introspective ballads ("Cope"), elevated by lyrics that speak to his peers, highlighting the struggles of a vulnerable young man on the verge of mass success, constantly caught between the need to be recognized and the need to preserve the inviolability of his own privacy.

A rapper-who-isn't-quite-a-rapper, idolized by fans, who has set aside the techno-feudal esoterica of his early days to embrace a futuristic sound, perfect for the big arenas where 2hollys finds his natural habitat, filling every inch of space with his athletic physicality, even though he almost always performs in near-total solitude, backed only by instrumental tracks and a lighting design capable of stirring intense emotional engagement.
"Star" flows by, liberating yet charged with palpable tension, built from a run of tracks destined to become staples of his best of, and toward the end, just when you're certain you're in the presence of a straightforward electropop record, the young man pulls out the unexpected: an acoustic, grunge-tinged ballad, "Eldest Child", sung with the image of Cobain in his head and heart, abruptly overturning the meaning of the album and catapulting Holly into the pantheon of great young hopes of American pop music. Leaning into something a bit more "played" might be just the right move to endure, avoiding becoming just another shooting star burned out too soon.

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01/07/2026