Newcomer 2hollis opens his highly anticipated 2025 album Star with bold conviction:

“You’re now witness to something
Hey, pay attention
You are now witness to something great.”

The gall in his tone makes it even sweeter to swallow. And he’s right—something like that only works when the music justifies the claim. What’s clear from the outset is that Hollis has honed the rare ability to transmute into new forms while maintaining a distinct sense of self. That gift, developed over time, pulses at the heart of Star.

In Greek mythology, there exists a relatively obscure god—one without a clear myth or consistent narrative—but who curiously appears in Herodotus’ Histories and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This god was later associated with the term puer aeternus, or the “eternal boy.”

Carl Jung would later adopt puer aeternus to describe a psychological archetype: a young man brimming with talent and passion, but paralyzed by a fear of responsibility. This archetype is someone who flits from pursuit to pursuit, unwilling to endure the pain of mastery. Creative, idealistic, and emotionally rich—but trapped by his own potential.

It’s ironic that many of these same traits—creativity, spontaneity, genuineness—are precisely what we revere in great artists. They are the ones whose work feels like it exists outside of time, piercing both past and future with a singular vision.

This dichotomy—between the soaring possibilities of youth and the weight of responsibility—is central to the world 2hollis has built around himself. Boylife, a recurring motif in his art, represents more than a name; it’s a feeling. It surfaces in unreleased tracks, YouTube clips, and creative vignettes—a thematic throughline, a fountain of youth he draws from constantly. But isn’t it always the most freeing things that become the most imprisoning?

2hollis, born Hollis Frazier-Herndon, first caught ears with his 2022 record White Tiger—a sonic fusion that began with a vaporized vocal track drenched in hard synths. The wavering electronic textures evoke comparisons to underground producer FISH, and from the start, Hollis showed an ability to synthesize influence into originality.

White Tiger laid the groundwork, but 2023’s 2 and 2024’s Boy mark the emergence of a fully realized persona. Boy functions as both a sonic sequel to 2 and a spiritual prequel to Star. These projects signal an evolution in form and identity—Hollis branches out vocally, leans harder into electronic structures, and experiments more boldly with melody and distortion.

Where White Tiger is unpolished because of obvious naivety, 2 and Boy feel intentionally raw—unfinished both for aesthetic, but one that is instrumental to progression. It’s the sound of someone working through ideas in real time, tugging at threads of genre and emotion. You’ll hear a dreamy 2010s synth-pop influence in one track, only to crash into pseudo-rage rap the next. There’s no timeline. No linearity. Just the fluidity of someone moving between selves.

With Star, Hollis embraces the chaos—and sharpens it. While the first half leans toward a refined new-age electronic sound, the latter half swerves into indie-folk territory. Tracks like “Eldest Child” and “Safe” take unexpected detours, but this shapeshifting is quintessentially 2hollis. The rawness isn’t a detour—it’s the point.

What defines this persona—this boylife—is the friction between self-growth and self-abandonment. Hollis seems to understand that creation itself is an act of contradiction: it demands destruction, rebuilding, and reconciliation. In White Tiger, we hear the start-and-stop anxiety of self-invention. In Star, we hear resolution: Hollis accepts that he is both the art and the artist, both the child and the adult.

Returning to Iacchus—the figure who lends puer aeternus its mythic weight—we find a god known not for his own deeds, but for his associations. He exists in proximity to power, never quite the source of it. But to be a god is to originate from oneself. To create from your own myth. And this, perhaps, is Hollis’ greatest feat: to construct a persona that begins and ends with no reference point but itself. 2hollis lives and dies by his own hand. And in that cycle, he invites others into his orbit—into boylife.

God or not, Hollis shows us what it means to become divine by breaking in and out of oneself.