Last Friday, Hollis Frazier-Herndon dropped his fourth studio album under the alias 2hollis: star. After putting out his previous three records himself, 2hollis gives us his first project with a major label, Interscope Records. It has already become his most popular. It debuted at No. 5 on Spotify’s global charts; it was the first of any of his albums to be reviewed by YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano, and even Finneas posted the record’s tenth track (“nice”) on his Instagram story with the caption, “sick.”
Because 2hollis rarely does interviews and maintains an elusive presence on social media, it was surprising that he publicized his artistic vision for the album on X. “this project is a collection of feelings and meanings,” he wrote in since-deleted tweets, “.. a diary of sorts.. from someone chasing such a strange thing.. stardom .. both magical and massive and yet utterly destructive.. It burns.. so bright !!” What he’s talking about here has always been inevitable, though. He’s one of the few artists with enough range to put out rage rap tracks like “style” and atmospheric ballads like “promise,” all while still sounding like himself. He offers something refreshingly different to the music scene, so his jump from the underground to the mainstream was a given.
Much of the album does feel like a reckoning––not just with being a celebrity but becoming one, and the balance between ego and humility, ambition and restraint. The album’s second track, “flash,” unleashes two versions of 2hollis: one desperately searching for rootedness amid self-alienating fame, and another who craves the spotlight. The song feels anxious; the beat sounds like a machine gun, and the overlaid vocals, coupled with abrupt shifts from rapping to singing to screaming, give the track an edge that pulls you in. Once there, you’re made to toggle between unapologetic lines like “Holli wanna be a star” and more woeful ones like “When the flashlights go, and you fall out of control,” all of which feel like they’re constantly fighting against each other. By the end of the song, the lines “Get home” and “Star”––stand-ins for stability and success––blur into each other to form its thematic double-dealing, introducing a more vulnerable 2hollis who will keep reappearing throughout the album. He raps, “Camera lights flash on me / can’t see / can’t breathe / I’m nauseous” on “sidekick” so fast that it really does sound like he’s hyperventilating. Further on in the record, “safe” brings a manic desire for stability, and “tell me” presents his paranoid disillusionment with other people––their insincerity, their incessant ogling, and their expectations. This is all well and good, but the problem with the album is that it doesn’t take us anywhere beyond the surface of these feelings.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s clearly some creativity in the record. On “cope” and “burn,” 2hollis uses samples from David Bowie’s “Heroes” and Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” but not in an obvious way. They’re tucked into the very back of the backing tracks and only discernible if you really listen; I had to replay “burn” five times before I made the famous piano riff from Carlton’s early 2000s hit single. And, to 2hollis’ credit, his range is on full display on the album; “girl” sounds like it could have been recorded by Ian, and he’s even got a rare acoustic moment on “eldest child” that strips back the usual maxed-out-EDM production for raw vocals and an acoustic guitar. The 808s and the Minecraft firework samples are still there, so star definitely sounds like a 2hollis project. But the precision of the samples and the new styles he’s testing out show he’s evolving.
Lyrically, though, 2hollis is holding back. The writing isn’t incisive; it could belong to any artist reflecting on the move from relative obscurity to the limelight. The line “How the fuck we at where we are?” in “flash” is trope that’s been cliché since Drake dropped “Started from the Bottom” in 2011. And, the bar “Only got a couple real, real friends” in “tell me” is about as general as you can get. These songs aren’t explicitly grounded in 2hollis’ own experience of, say, going from a SoundCloud rapper to his first big record label, or getting some initial hate as Ken Carson’s opener last year before ‘jeans’ went viral on TikTok, or even being called a nepo-baby because of his music mogul parents. He has plenty of personal material to work with, but because none of it felt like a significant part of the album, star lacks the level of originality that made his previous releases like boy (2024) and white tiger (2022) such great albums. Even the production on star doesn’t match the kind of creativity fans are used to. The album feels like a shallow imitation of hyperpop, filled with tracks that are interesting enough to grab your attention but not substantial enough to leave any impression on you.
There are two possible reads of the album. The first is that this is just a subpar drop. Fair enough. The second is based on a Reddit thread called “The Safe Theory.” According to one user, 2hollis intentionally played it safe on this release by being overly generic in an attempt to “garner more of a broader appeal upon his signing” with Interscope. Under this interpretation, maybe everything I didn’t like about the album was intentional and really just part of a larger meta-commentary on art losing value as it becomes more and more mainstream. There’s a chance star’s sister album will be everything this record wasn’t. Maybe 2hollis is gearing up for a mega two-album-long project about what it means to be a celebrity and a spectacle, all while using the very albums responsible for his fame as a way to critique it. But this theory requires us to do a lot of heavy lifting. Odds are, this album is just a miss.