Front and center with the rising star.
Javier is in his mid-30s, sports an oversized Cubs jersey, and is incredibly generous with his beer. He doesn’t really “get” 2hollis, but his teenage son certainly does. Javier tries to introduce him to my friend and I. With bangs flopping past his eyes, the kid turns around, looks at us, screams the next lyric, then continues his thunderous jumping as if he’s chained to the balcony banister and trying to escape.
The man on stage was a centaur in a past life. He’s well over 6’5”, his silver hair reaches his lower back, and his kicking motions are uncannily buck-like. I’d known the name for years, had listened and enjoyed his past three albums, but I had no idea that 2hollis had this much of a grip on the youth.
Sitting outside the Salt Shed in Chicago an hour before the show, droves of kids swarmed across the parking lot wearing homemade merch, wigs fashioned after Hollis’ hair, and a thin line of black or white paint across their face. Many put their phones on the curb and posed for the initial frame of their “Before 2hollis / After 2hollis” TikToks. As Hollis’ set time neared, the outdoor venue was a couple thousand deep, and the anticipation was thick.
The barrier separating stage from crowd was already rattling; a short woman, presumably the head of security, began barking orders. The six or seven guards tasked with neutralizing the oncoming barrage of blood-thirsty fans all shared the same “Ahhh shiiiittttt” look on their faces. This army of kids, in direct opposition of the guards in front of them, shared the same goal: get as close as possible to the man on stage.
The curtain raises and an enormous statue of a white tiger appears. 2hollis comes out to the machine-gun bass of “flash,” and it all makes sense. The tears, the drool, the contorted faces competing for his attention; these reactions are involuntary. 2hollis is not only beautiful, but he has surplus amount of “aura” that allows his mere presence to define the term. I was in the photo pit, only twenty inches away from him, when I started to levitate towards the sole of his reptilian boot. I, a God-fearing man who was baptized as a bald baby, had to remind myself of the good book’s many warnings of deities, no matter how alluring they may be, and used all of my Earthly strength to resist his pull. The crowd surged and surged and surged, moving like the grand bellows of a giant accordion. As if in a single-file line, sweat-drenched loonies were pulled out one by one by security, whose battle against the barrier was in dire straits.
A short reprieve, then “nerve,” an even more explosive track. The crowd screamed along:
IF YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVED ME
WOULD I EVEN TRY?
PROLLY NOT
BUT I’D STILL SAY GOODBYE
When it ended, Hollis asked the overzealous crowd to take two steps back. A seasoned security guard, who had pretty much given up at this point, tried getting the artist’s attention from below. “Aye! Tell ‘em again! Tell ‘em again!” He did not tell ‘em again, instead kicking off “tell me,” a sinister, eerily paranoid song about the guilty pleasure of reading about himself online and wondering whether shawty, who is on the table spread eagle for him, would do it for another man.
Returning to the balcony, I find a smiling Javier with two cold PBRs he bought for me. He puts his arm around my friend and takes a selfie with both of us: “This is legendary!!” he says. His kid is losing his mind. The boy’s civilized form has been released from its mortal bounds for the night; behind his eyes, I see a still image of Hollis’ visage.
Before telling me about his upcoming hunting trip in Michigan, Javier asks me to explain what “this” is. I ramble about how it’s a mix of Playboi Carti, EDM, and My Chemical Romance. (The latter came to mind as Hollis sang the angsty cut “teenage soldier”: “I took her out to dinner / But she’s crying on the way back home.”) I stand by this, but a more succinct label is deeply ambitious pop music. 2hollis is making stadium songs on a computer that translate extremely well live. They’re high-energy by nature, Hollis’ showmanship and exhaustive effort on stage is admirable, and it was encouraging to hear him perform exclusive live-only remixes of a few songs. It’s by no means the music of a teeny-bopper–it’s complicated, self-conscious, indulgently dramatic and painfully vulnerable.
~~~
Two years ago, Olivier and I sat down with The Hellp for an interview. This didn’t make the final draft, but as we discussed the state of music, Noah Dillon, who has since directed videos for 2hollis, brought him up. “I think 2hollis has a chance at being big as fuck. He’s proved that he can make good pop music within the style of his production, and I haven’t seen anybody else be able to do that [right now]. And he’s 19.”
Later that night, while riding the subway back to Brooklyn, I looked 2hollis up. I recognized his name from flyers for Dimes Square shows and as an opener at Market Hotel, and I think I’d heard “jeans” before. At the time, I remember him having just 11,000 followers on Instagram (a far cry from the 884k today). I didn’t see the vision until seven months later, when his proper debut boy came out. Lord of the Rings-esque soundscapes met diary entry writing, making minor rifts in relationships feel like life and death. This put him on the map, then he released star, which is my favorite. It’s high-octane dance music, but the beat for “sidekick” could just as easily be on a Ken Carson album, and the acoustic “eldest child,” in another life, would have eternally banished him to coffee-house oblivion.
Needless to say, Noah’s instinct was correct.
~~~
Javier brings me another beer, puts his arm around me, then points at his kid’s new 2hollis hoodie. “If you ain’t spending $110 on a hoodie, get out the building!!!” As the set winds down, my friend and I head down to the floor to see the crowd. The energy is still high, and right before he closes with multiple renditions of “jeans,” he asks the crowd to put their twos in the air. I can’t help but think that there will be a lot more the next time around.
