“The performance was fuelled as much by his frenetic energy as by the audience’s near‑religious devotion.”
Each time 2hollis steps out on stage, he seems to inch closer to hyper stardom and crawls a little further out the depths of subreddit threads, turning his online mythos into folk legend.
The LA-via-Chicago artist has risen from the underbelly of the city’s music scene with caustic, compulsive, self-produced music, attracting both a devoted fanbase and an equally fervent opposition. At just 21, he has released four albums and two EPs across twice as many styles, generating stripped-down verses atop frenetic instrumental mash-ups that feel like the output of a mind racing at lightspeed. His sound draws on early 2010s figures like Chief Keef, alongside newer acts such as Xaviersobased and Snow Strippers, with echoes of Crystal Castles or Drain Gang.
Anyone who has spent more than two minutes reading about him knows the basics: his family is in music and PR, he started young, and has the internet generation obsessed. Back in 2018, at 14, he emerged online as Drippysoup. The arc echoed Bieber’s early days, though reimagined as someone who grew alongside the SoundCloud kids and took in the obsessive rhythms of niche internet subcultures.
The show at the Brixton O2 that night felt like a litmus test: has he managed to take his internet aura and translate it to real-life charisma? As I reached the venue, collected my ticket, and found a seat in the upper deck, I was almost certain the mass of teens hopping up and down were going to collapse the balcony. Lauded as ‘the city’s best dressed’, fans grabbed each other’s shoulders in anticipation. Fur jackets, tatted faces, lace tights, belt skirts, skinny jeans, Rick Owens and moon boots galore. Suddenly, a little wave of shiny blond shoulder-length hair appeared from behind the hind legs of a giant glowing white inflatable tiger on stage.
He opened the night with the convulsive “flash”, making delirious groans while the fans shrieked every lyric. The twinkly banger “DOGS” set the room even more alight. This was one of the most feverish audiences I’d ever seen. People behaved like they were in a scrum, screaming at him to play songs to the point where it was almost excruciating, a blitz of verbal vomit: “nerve” “tell me” “poster boy”, the latter of which has since shot up to the top of his Spotify popular tracks list.
The tripped out lasers of “nice” soared over the room and sent everyone into a mosh. The crowd hollered out the lyrics to “gold” like a worshipper’s chant. The video for the latter shows him adorning a black line etched across the bridge of his nose, a mark many fans had copied that night (a possible nod to his childhood years playing baseball, a signature look among players). As he reached the Drake-imbued “style” and the hedonistic “Destroy Me,” where he sings “You preach, I’ll beam, they teach,” Hollis bellows a sweaty pop-in-hyperdrive workout. Free to indulge in his impulses onstage, he is wired, calculated, liminal, and channels ecstatic energy.
Everything reached a fever pitch at the final song. Waiting in the wings were The Hellp and rommulas, longtime collaborators who’ve toured with 2hollis and regularly join him onstage. 2hollis started tumbling through jeans, seven times over to be exact, and on the last run, they came back out to tear up the stage for one last round, attempting to launch the giant inflatable tiger that had ominously lingered behind him all show into the crowd. They then frolick among the giant beast like big kids in a bounce house, and 2hollis collapses backwards, his small frame disappearing into the tiger’s front paw as his limbs flew through the air.
Despite initial doubts, Hollis commanded the stage with enough raw swag to drive the crowd into full-blown chaos on a Wednesday night. His music still hits like a shot of dopamine straight to the brain, but it’s done with meticulous precision and the performance was fuelled as much by his frenetic energy as by the audience’s near‑religious devotion.
On the way out, attendees spoke as if they’d just met their messiah. Fans exited the balcony screaming, “Marry me!!”, “Take me backstage” and nearby parties jokingly threatened to throw them off the balcony because “He’s mine! He’s mine!”. Another kid sat at the top of the Brixton venue’s stairs, muttering to his friend, “That was like an exorcism.” And I can see what they mean, the way he’d belt his lyrics eyes closed up into the sky like he was giving himself over to the performance, the restless manner in which he leapt gracefully across stage, the desperate speed with which people exited the venue to have a chance at meeting him. Maybe the unhinged fervour he’s inspired will endure.