Switched on Pop - 2hollis is the underground’s genre-hopping vampire

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

In the last episode of our feral pop miniseries, we take a look at the 22 year old rapper primed to take over the world: 2hollis. Splitting the difference between hardstyle and hip-hop while emanating an aura best described as “vampiric,” he’s been one of the most hyped musicians coming out of the underground. His music is distorted, chaotic, and over the top – literally – but he reflects a larger sentiment from younger audiences: the more sonic chaos the better. Links: ⁠Newsletter⁠, ⁠YouTube Songs discussed: Ninajirachi – Fuck My Computer underscores – Music 2hollis – poster boy SUICIDAL-IDOL – ecstacy 2hollis – flash 2hollis – beginning 2hollis – sidekick underscores, 8485 – your favorite sidekick 2hollis – crush 2hollis – 3 Skrillex – Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch Pet Insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada.

All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need.

It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-copy, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-3 at O-D-O-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm producer Rianna Cruz. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan, and I'm a songwriter Charlie Harding. This week on Switched-on-Pop, we've been exploring the new sound of pop music through the lens of what I have come to dub feral pop for its uninhibited experimental genre blending sensibilities. We've already spoken about the DJ Nino Jarachi and the pop star underscores and how they

both speak to this vibe through a palpable love for EDM and dubstep. And on that same vibe, there's digital sounds and textures and an approach that indicates no genre is off limits, often switching through multiple in the same song. It's a very tactile genre and speak Gen. Which is fitting because today we're going to be talking about the third artist I find to be firmly on the feral pop roster, the rapper Two Hollis, who is only 22 years old. So he's very much a young artist making music for young people.

I know I'm talking to two elder millennials, so don't get scared. Here's his song, Poster Boy. I'm shaking in my new balances. Shaking in my aunts. No, my hocus. This song is off of his 2023 album title two, and in it you could hear a lot of the elements we've been talking about all week. Dubstep beats, lots of electronic, digital fragmented sounds, vocals, which are almost unintelligible because of how highly their process. Same vibe.

Yeah, it's a hybrid electronic rap pop sound. I know you can't hear the lyrics too much, and that's by design. You know, it's so lo-fi. You can't even make out the words he's saying. But it's like Too Hollis here is his own instrument. You know, his voice is chopped and kind of ingrained into the mix in such a way that his vocal is not a disparate element. Like the vocal is part of the overall texture of the sound, not something that is being accompanied by the other musical elements. Totally.

Yeah, the vocal is just another instrument. I appreciate you identifying us as elder millennials, Rihanna, because out of all the feral pop we've heard this week, this is the hardest for me to digest. the distortion, the unintelligible vocals, the harsh synths, it is a mix of elements that feel like they are designed to repel me. I mean, what do you want out of feral pop, Nate? You want some steely Dan, some highly produced, you know, beautiful hi-fi records where you can hear every harmony and instrument. No, if you want to be feral, it's got to be this messy. This is the most feral thing we've listened to in my opinion. This is like a cat that needs to be spayed.

This is deeply feral. It's funny that you guys think this is the most feral because of all the music that we've talked about this week, of all the artists that I brought under the feral pop umbrella, I feel the most confident in asserting that two Hollis is going to be the biggest deal very soon. Part of me says that because he is a nepo baby, his mom founded a music PR firm and his dad is a musician. So the press push that he's had has been absolutely unmatched.

But Too Hollis is kind of already a big deal by underground standards. He has a really big dedicated fan base. That song poster boy has almost 200 million streams on Spotify. It's pretty simple. It's only two minutes long and seems made to score slow motion fan cams of popular movie actors. as it has been on social media. It reminds me of the big TikTok hit from a few years ago that we had covered on a chart breakers episode,

the song, Ecstasy by Suicidal Idol. Yeah, that song haunted me ever since you played it for us, Rihanna. It's really catchy. Is it? Wow. See, this is, I mean,

I'm fascinated because I feel like we are now starting to fracture a little bit in our consensus in a way that I think is really revealing. that song I find catchy but in a really dark way. Yeah. And the fact that you think Too Hollis is going to be the biggest of all these artists maybe defies what I said on previous episodes of this series of like, oh, I'm feeling optimistic for, you know, these musicians and their generation. I'm not sensing the optimism anymore.

I'm not sensing the love of digital technology. I'm sensing more of the disillusionment or disillusionment. Association. It feels the most appropriate. I mean, underneath this entire discussion of Farrell Pop and this embrace of digital technology has been the embrace of old technology that was safe and unthreatening. We live in a moment where new graduates are booing the CEOs of major tech companies. So I think it's really appropriate to have this sort of voice like Tohawal is something that is a little more menacing, a little more foreboding. It feels like it's fitting. Very doomer core.

That blown out bass and snare is so distressing to me. When it comes to the overall repertoire of Two Hollis, I got to admit, of the three artists that we've been talking about, I'm probably the least familiar with his work, but only because I think a lot of Too Hollis's appeal is a bit harder to explain musically. So it goes back to something that I said about Poster Boy that we've been discussing, the fact that the vocals are so lo-fi, they're like obscured. You can't really hear what he's saying. And his voice comes through clearer on his newer music, which we'll get to. But Poster Boy was the song that blew him up. And the fact that you can't really tell anything about the guy behind the lyrics is a huge part of his whole appeal. And it bleeds into the music. Are you guys familiar with the concept of aura? ORA, as in the overall vibe, the magical content you put out on the internet that gives everyone the right feels? No, they're talking about Walter Benyamin, the artist in the age of mechanical reproduction, the erratic quality, the ritualistic relationship that we try and maintain to art even in an age of now digital reproduction. I believe that's what is meant by aura. Yeah, I don't think I'm talking about either.

It's not, it's not talking about Walter Benjamin, Benhamine, is that it? Ben Yamin. Ben Yamin. Yeah. It's not the Webster's definition of aura either. There's a new Gen Z and Gen Alpha definition of aura as a descriptor. It's something can have aura. It's a tangible thing that you want. People seek out aura.

aura is a sign of being cool. It's a sign of being unbothered. We are in an aura economy. The more aura that you have, the better. And the appeal of Too Hollis is that he's like aura personified. It's an appearance thing. He looks like a mythic Lord of the Rings creature. He has super long, wavy platinum blonde hair, often wears a fuck ton of eyeliner to bring out his piercing brown eyes.

And in an article for pitchfork, Alphonse Pierre described him as being built like noz ferratu. Yeah, he's like seven feet tall. He has porcelain skin that has never seen the sun. It's very vampiric. And if you put that all together, it is a pretty compelling image for an artist and one that naturally connects with an aesthetic focus generation, of which he is a part of that is engaging with everything, including feral pop, image first. So going back to the music, poster boy is his most popular. song, I think, for a reason, because the distortion on his vocal plays into this idea of him being a mysterious figure who you can't really know too much about.

Rihanna, I feel like there's a sonic equivalent to this visual aura that you're talking about because one of the things that all three of these artists we've talked about in the world of feral pop all have is this sound, which is completely over the top. And I don't mean over the top as a vague descriptor, but as a very specific music technique. Let's see if I can demonstrate. First of all, we need to open up serum, which is the synthesizer that basically enabled the late stages of dubstep. It's the digital synthesizer that everybody uses. When you open up serum, it's going to sound kind of like this.

Nothing that interesting. You can detune that sound. You can change the timbre from that saw wave to one that I see here called Gremlin. Add a bunch more oscillators, which are basically sound sources, filter it and add some modulation. All right, now you're getting pretty close to like dubstep Scrilex sound. Lots of wobs. But what's missing is that OTT, that over the top quality. And OTT is a style of compression that basically takes all of the loudest parts of your sound and squashes them and all of the quietest parts of your sound and makes those even louder.

It's a way of almost digitally flattening and enhancing everything. So here is the sound with no OTT. And here's some OTT. Yeah, some more effects. You've got a big part of that feral pop sound. That OTT is on everything. Like here's a screaming bass. Put the OTT on it.

Ah, yeah, I hate it. You can hear it just makes everything edgy or brighter, more intense, completely over the top. And that OTT sound, which started as an Ableton preset on a compressor and is now a plug-in that people use on all kinds of synth sounds, that is just common throughout the entire feral pop sound. It's that digital flattening, hyper-aggressive sound you hear on all the synthesizers. That's really cool because it puts a word to the thing that I've just been calling digital distortion this entire time. There often are forms of distortion on there as well, but what the OTT does is it takes all of those characteristics of distortion and makes them over the top. Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Do you have a pet?

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for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-Free at O-D-O-O-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. Visit BetM-D-M-D-M-G-N-Cino and check out the newest exclusive. The price is right. Right fortune pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly.

If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Well, speaking of the top, I think we should listen to the song Flash from the top. This song is off of his record Star that came out last year, and we're hearing more electronic sounds here. The MRI sound that we talked about in underscores song,

music is back. And I think there's a lot of similarities between the two tracks. Yeah, that da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. They both start with the MRI bass, as we've called it. And have these ad-libs that float in. You know, they're both going, yeah. and stuff like that. The sound of computer music.

This is music that was recorded to the computer with computer sounds, recorded in a room. There's no sense of being in the studio. Yeah. It is stuff that is completely made on a device, which doesn't make it inhuman by any means. Maybe part of what makes Nate uncomfortable is so much of the stuff that you grew up loving the deepest. Like you can hear the room. You can hear the players responding to each other. This is everything programmed.

This is everything manipulated and done in this very flat kind of way where there is no sense of space. It's anechoic pop, vacuum sealed. Another word for it could be DIY. Yeah, it's very DIY. I mean, it feels like this could be made on a laptop that someone's had for a lot of years and is not running so well anymore and still make some really awesome sounds. Yeah, the vocals on here feel like they're being sung into like the Apple headphone microphone, you know, holding it above your lips. It's not clean by any means. And his voice, we could hear it a lot clearer on Flash than we can on Poster Boy, obviously.

It's very bright. And it's kind of giving like boy band pop punky heart drop. It's poppy, hooky melodies, except for it has that DIY quality because it's showing you all of its edits. Right? So typically when we record a vocal, we record what we call a comp where you do many, many takes of a vocal and you cut together the very best parts. And you want to do so so that it sounds invisible. You can't tell that it was different takes. Here, Two Hollis is cutting into himself where one line is starting before the other line ends. It's highly digital. It's clearly made in a nonlinear method. And it's showing its methodology by not covering up any of its rough edges. It's very chaotic in a way that I find out where we are. How do you want to be a star? It's very chaotic in a way that I find extremely stressful. You just need some exposure therapy.

We're going to put two holes on your headphones as you go to sleep for the next two weeks. You're going to be very red-eyed and not well-rested. But by the end of those two weeks, you're going to be converted. I believe it. I am acknowledging my instinctual reactions. And the fact that I'm having those reactions signals that what Rianna's been saying is probably true. This is forward-looking music. It's reaching beyond what I'm comfortable with in a way that is signaling what is to come.

I hate to call to Hollis the voice of a generation, but I do think he's speaking to a generation of listeners who grew up listening to pop, electronic, rap on the same iPod. and he's synthesizing them all at the same time. The way he says in the chorus, cameras on flash, cameras on flash. It's a cadence that you hear a lot in trap music. I also describe the underscoresby as futuristic trap music, like trap music beamed from 100 years into the future and is abstracted so far from what we know trap music to be. That's present on this song,

as he's rapping, and the lyrics in Flash are on the same wave as Poster Boy. They discuss meta-narratives around fame and celebrity. I want to stay on this first verse for a little bit because there's the refrain of Holly want to be a star with the idea of this flashing cameras and swarming paparazzi. It's an angle that is almost professing. which I find to be another similarity to underscores, as we talked about last episode. There's a lot of fixation from these artists on the concept of fame, legacy, and a potential reason for this could be that these artists are currently making music.

And in this time, people are finding it harder to make money. And simultaneously, the idea of being famous and being a celebrity looks different than it did 10, 20 years ago. And so all of these artists are processing that in their own way. This idea of fame and how Tohawas is situated in it is a lyrical through line throughout Star, the album. He starts it off with visions of grandeur, even preempting the song Flash on the track beginning. I pay attention.

You are now witness to something great. Right now, Flash. The word Flash, the camera. Flash. It's also on the song Sidekick. Wow, that is so hard to listen to. I am struck that we already heard a song about sidekicks, right? That was underscores. That was underscores. That was underscores. Yeah. Yeah, your favorite sidekick. Interesting.

What a surprising theme. Celebrity? Why, superstar running out of mileage. Can't sleep 2 a.m. I don't really mind it. Ring, ring. Pick it up. I could be a psychic.

Sidekick is also another piece of outdated technology. Ooh, correct. A phone called the sidekick. Yeah. So it comes into that theme. But it's also interesting of this idea of like sidekick, you know. It's such a, I don't know, it feels very of the moment. moment to me in some ways, like, you know, I'm not going to expect like a deep devoted relationship

with someone. It's like, I could just be a sidekick. It's very modern. It's very like polycule, Friends with Benefits vibe. So looking at the feral pop checklist, with regards to Flash, we have the lyrical slant. We have the genre bending. You know, this type of sound has been labeled rave rap for the way it combines hip-hop and trap sensibilities with electronic production. And there's definitely that over-the-top digital crunch to it all, as Charlie talked about. On Flash, these textures come through even harder in the back half of the song where we have the build and drop that also makes the connection to feral pop's larger EDM vibes. We get the hard style kick here, the bit crush.

Yes. Feels like you're being zapped with a laser. You know, it collapses into a full hard style techno beat. This electronic influence is all over to Hollis' catalog. He does the same thing on the song Crush. I got a curse on you to every single thing. I think I think of something to do toys you, you, you, you. I got a curse.

Whoa. That crush is what happens when in Star Wars they get set down into the trash compactor. And in the movie, they all get saved. But if you don't get saved and the trash compactor crushes you, that's what happens. That's scream in there too. Crash! So it's clear, you know, To Hollis loves this digital breakdown. And while he's influenced by the same sounds as Nina, Jarachi and underscores, and clearly,

has an affinity for more hardcore styles of EDM. I was puzzled slightly because it seems so different than the version of EDM that Nina and underscores focus on and embody. You know, it's less dubstep and more hard style and techno. Flash has everything else going for it. You know, it has the lyrical elements. It has the genre mashing. It has the digitized elements of feral pop. All in the same song. But I was wondering, where's the scrylicks, right? First, I chalked it up to Two Hollis being roped into the hip hop community. You know, he opened up for a rapper Ken Carson on tour, has courted a very strong rap fan base. But then I was like, no, Skrillix has lots of clout in the hip hop community.

He's worked with lots of hip hop artists. And then I googled Two Hollis Skrillx to see if he had talked about him as an influence or something. So remember when I said he was a Nepo Baby, his mom with the PR firm had actually founded a record label with Scrillix called Ausla. Oh, yeah. And Too Hollis says that Scrillix never mentored him, but come on, let's be real here. I just got to say that even though Vulture's Nate Jones coined the term Nepo Baby and it is a real thing, in the world of music, I really deeply believe that no matter the connections you have, the music also has to hit. There's so much music that comes out any given day. We like to always believe that there's someone behind the scenes, pulling the strings,

and that's the thing that makes it work. Getting exposure is not easy. But people are really responding to the music. The shows in Brooklyn sold out people going nuts to Two Hollis. When I did a little bit more listening to Two Hollis's back catalog, I saw that he even made a bona fide Skrillix core dubstep song on the 2024 record boy. It's the track three. And people think that the three is in relation to the three lines in Scrilix's logo.

That's a little bit too conspiratorial for me, but the song speaks for itself. That, that's the Scrilix. Whoa. That's like the hardcore version of Dubstep, because it has the MRI machine thing, which is really like it's a transgate, is the technical term probably. It's got the super microchopped sudden bursts of sound that you don't expect. It's got the roaring screaming bass. Definitely.

To Hollis publicly dedicated the song three to Scrillix. And yeah, it makes sense. It's a more lo-fi version of the stuff that Scrilix was doing, especially in the early 2010s, on songs like scary monsters and night sprites. Yes. Oh my God. That oh my God, courtesy of a YouTube video of cup stacking champion, Rachel Nedro? I want to say that's your name.

I mean, we wrote about this in our book years ago, and I might be getting that right. But one of the great samples of the 21st century. Oh my gosh. Iconic. Shout out to Rachel Nedro, wherever you are, stacking cups these days. Hopefully stacking paper. Again, all of the elements of feral pop are present in the music of Two Hollis. He's giving us a refreshing, exciting, and youthful take on all the genres he's pulling from

trap and rage music from people like Playboy Cardi, Electropunk, like Crystal Castles, and the image and aura farming of the big rock stars of yesteryear. And there's still the looming influence of Skrillix. And this is why I think that he's poised to blow up the most because he is the embodiment of the scene in a lot of ways and also connects with these disparate audiences. Like electronic fans love him, rap fans love him, pop fans love him, creating a perfect storm of success. Nate, how are you feeling now? I feel a little disquieted, a little concerned. and yet I feel like those emotions are a signal that everything Rihanna is saying is factually true.

This is the music of the future. I'm not ready for it, but I'm going to try and get on board, folks. I'm going to try to go feral. Youthful music is often designed to be of its generation and cut out the generation that came before by being aggressive, by being uncomfortable, by being feral. And so I just want to point out there, like, I appreciate you. for naming how you're feeling. And I think for any of us that have that feeling of discomfort when we hear something, it's often a way of saying,

ooh, maybe I should lean in so I can get to know that thing better. Truly, if you just try it a few more times, you're going to be nodding your head. Or tearing off all your clothing, running off into the woods, and going completely feral. Yeah, a lot of these artists came of age at a time when the Internet was more necessary than ever. I think the global lockdown and everybody having,

to be online and engage with each other on the internet is a defining factor in the way that Gen Z and Gen Alpha processed the world. And so it makes sense that this music has been extremely successful and connecting with this age bracket. From Nina Jarachi to underscores to Too Hollis, I find that there's more than enough reasons for us all to get feral. And I'll be looking forward to seeing what pop music gets undomesticated in the years to come. Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Lissa Soap, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Arras Gottlieb, video by Nick Rips. Our theme song is by Zach Tenario and Jossi Adams of Arc Iris.

Or a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at NYMag.com slash pod. Rianna, you knocked it out of the park with your Farrell Pop, three episodes in a row. Thank you for doing this. This has been so much fun. I feel very enlightened to hear some new music. People can check out more music on our podcast at Switchonpop.com.

We'll be back again next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. One of those media strategy people, clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets. Yes? Good. This is for you.

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