2hollis. Photo by Mia Rankin.
Rap Blog is a weekly showcase of a standout rap song.
Does 2hollis present himself as a rapper? Sorta, kinda. He says he’s primarily inspired by Drain Gang, and he was opening for Ken Carson on tour last year, but his music sits just past the bleeding edge of EDM and hip-hop. It’s less “Wild For The Night” genre mashup than DAW-enabled postgenre ecstasy, refracting the titanic synths of rage rap and hyperpop back into bawdy clubrat jingles.
Their approaches are a little dissimilar, but 2hollis reminds me a bit of glaive, how their music reworks and repackages disparate and stranger ideas from internet scenes into something a little glossier and more meticulously presented. Such is the business of pop music, though it’s debatable if profitable songs always end up being good ones.
Cribbing heavily from the swag era, “Style” is among 2hollis’s better ones, though it does feel a bit like eating way too many McDonald’s fries. Basically, he sounds like Tyga feat. Justin Bieber over an instrumental that approximates Dylan Brady covering “The Motto” by Drake, which may seem awesome or disgusting depending on how much mileage you can get out of Impact font memes and/or 2013-era DJ Mustard tapes. His raps are perfunctory, which is exactly what you would expect for a Cobra Starship-style song — hey girl, did you know your smile is “so catchy?” And my haters are infantile? And as for the video, it could appear in Merriam-Webster under the title “eboy bodychecking.”
A lot of sonic nostalgia feels cloying and forced, but at least at the moment, reworking peak-YMCMB soundkits and recession-core pop feels inspired if not quite inventive. Think of YT flipping Lady Gaga on “#PURRR,” RADA’s Tumblr-inflected Swag&B, or the naked musical pastiche of Thirteendegrees — these songs aim for a similar catharsis as their source material via modern tools and contemporary songwriting conventions. Where the indie sleaze revival can veer into cosplay, hip-hop’s swag revival has been somewhat narrower and generally more natural.
“Style” is a little synthetic, but that suits 2hollis just fine — who doesn’t love Diet Coke and exotic flavor Elfbars? In 8 months, when Rebecca Black is doing a knockoff of “Jeans,” this bubbly banger will come off like an icy Lacroix compared to a flat Sierra Mist.
