Just a few days ago, I found myself trying to explain 2hollis to a friend of mine who had never seen him or heard his music. I didn’t have any signal and wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi, so I really had to just think about him and try to find some comparisons that might be helpful and relevant. I only then realized that there was something very interesting about how he has poised himself within the broader landscape of the music industry. 2hollis was surprisingly difficult to put my finger on: his image and sound pull from two separate facets of the alternative pop music landscape in an interestingly stealthy way.
I do not know if this is by his own design, but 2hollis is mining swag from Drain Gang’s aesthetics and PC Music’s sound. If this isn’t the type of music you usually dabble in, then this sentence must have made very little sense to you. The Swedish music collective Drain Gang is made up of Bladee, Ecco2k, Thaiboy Digital, and Whitearmour. As a group, they have originated not just a distinctive sound, but also a fully realized aesthetic. They have built an entire universe for their music to inhabit. They have a distinctive style of music videos, fashion, graphics, and subject matter. Their fans constitute an entire subculture: the Drainers. For the most part, everything Drainer-related skews a bit gothic, but in a very tech and internet way. Think digital goth. They have sad boy personas, their lyrics tend to be a bit downbeat, and their production is atmospheric and slightly ethereal. They mumble songs about disillusionment, heartbreak, or ennui.
One could argue that their style of dressing could be seen as proto-Opium. Opium (not related to the drug, but rather the name of a record label) is another aesthetic that is popular among sad boy types. It, like Drainer aesthetics, borrows elements from Y2K and emo aesthetics from the early 2000s like Mall Goth and Scene, but synthesizes those with more current references in the fashion industry, like Rick Owens and more androgynous, flirty styles. Opium has only started to break out from being a very niche style relatively recently, but its rise in popularity has been fast and furious. 2hollis has emerged as a style muse in the Opium subculture, even catching the attention of Rick Owens himself. But despite his clear embrace of this Drainer-adjacent image his music bears little in common with the sound associated with this dark and moody aesthetic.
In terms of sound, 2hollis’ music is a bit at odds with his look. His songs are catchy and clubby, in which he delivers hooks about a glitzy life: posing for cameras, young love, and jeans. His songs are noticeably more absurd and frivolous than the Drainers he seems to imitate. 2hollis’s sound is strikingly influenced by PC Music, which was a record label and artistic collective based in London, England and founded by A. G. Cook in 2013. PC Music pioneered hyperpop. The sound is almost ridiculously electronic: globular beats, metallic noises, heavily edited vocals, repetitive and simple lyrics. 2hollis incorporates all of these PC Music style hallmarks into his music. His songs call to mind SOPHIE and GFOTY more than they do Bladee. But however much his music may be inspired by the PC Music sound, he rejects the aesthetic completely. PC Music, visually, is neon, tech-y, ironic, and intrinsically feminine.
2hollis completely misses this irony and satirical quality in his music. While the hyperpop of PC Music is critiquing the celebrity and consumer obsessed culture at large and pop music itself, 2hollis seems to celebrate this decadent culture and soulless, overly manufactured sound, image, and persona as a pop star. In an odd and roundabout way, 2hollis can be seen as the antithesis of the PC Music idea. He is like one of their projects come to life: a fully realized and omnisciently self-aware pop-star.
2Hollis has strategically bridged the gap between the PC Music and Drain Gang spaces. He has paired back elements of both genres in order to alchemize a new, more approachable, vein of electronic music. It can appeal to a more masculine crowd than PC Music and it is less sad than Drainer music. His songs are catchy and approachable. He isn’t as esoteric or potentially alienating as his inspirations. 2hollis poses as a subversive figure while performing a song that ostensibly has no meaning. You can get away with playing his music in the car or at a pre-game without getting nasty looks from your normie friends. It’s music you can aura farm to.
In effectively sanitizing and repackaging two wildly different extremes of hyperpop music into a new and easily digestible bastardization of alternative pop, 2hollis becomes an insightful case-study into the future of the music industry. He is one of a class of other emerging musical talents that share a similar look or sound. Many artists lately have been co-opting a hyperpop sensibility in their music, only it isn’t a very faithful copy. It is so overly reliant on the irony typical of the genre, but lacks any of the actual wit or musical innovation. It is watered down so it can be more easily disseminated into viral algorithms and radio charts. It is fundamentally in opposition to its originator. Hyperpop was reactive to soulless consumer pandering pop music. It is meant to be an unflattering and grotesque caricature of pop, but now this new diluted spinoff seems like an unsuccessful caricature of a caricature. It’s getting into Baudrillard’s simulacrum territory. It is exhaustingly meta. This new community of artists is a reflection of our broader cultural malady: the people want to look niche or esoteric without having to digest media that is in any way challenging, upsetting, or genuinely off-beat. But, at the end of the day, at least his music sounds good.
Words by Benjamin Pulka
Graphic by Ariana Sancho