You are now witness to something great

2hollis, boylife and the girlhood hangover

Ciao! I’m working on a special Coachella report for you. So, in the spirit of YOUTH and MUSIC, today’s Saturday letter is about the elven 21-year-old rapper 2hollis, who is performing at Coachella tonight, his new album, and the potentials of boylife in the hangover of girlhood.

This week I’m feeling moved by how a youthful spirit, only a youthful one, can channel the now, herd all the atoms that make it and create something new from them. I’m imagining Aang, the 12-year-old protagonist in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, shaping the air around him, bending it.

That’s what I thought of while listening to 2hollis’s album star when it came out last week. It sounds like right now, like how people born in 2004 think in 2025. That’s how 2hollis looks too, he’s an angel who’d come to you in a dream about a vision — zero-percent body fat, smudgy eyes and a lank halo of white-blonde hair. Seven feet tall in black boots. An angel for right now, a dark angel made of light.

His music came onto me slower than his appearance. I couldn’t really get into it. Some fans on r/2hollis say that the new album, his first big label-backed LP, is a little boring compared to his older stuff, the songs he made when he was a teenager. Maybe that’s why I like star — it’s kind of like the theory that there’s a frequency people can only hear if they’re under 25. Maybe the more commercial update of hollis’s music sounds good to me because I’m over 25.

Either way, the album’s nowness shook me up. While listening to it for the first time I became convinced that 2hollis could unite the left. More on that later.