As I continue to dive into and highlight more and more of the local Hip Hop scene in Milwaukee, two things are certain; this scene is bursting with talent, and it is way more diverse than it is credited for. It seems like there is a very talented artist for fans of all kinds of Hip Hop in the city if you look hard enough. An artist that has been garnering a lot of attention online in underground Hip Hop scenes over the last year or so is 2hi. 2hi is an artist who grew up in Nashville but calls Milwaukee his home today. He has been working on honing his craft for quite a while now. 2hi first started uploading music on Soundcloud all the way back in 2015. Between 2015-2017, 2hi uploaded a bunch of one-off singles on Soundcloud, not releasing his first EP until May of 2017. In 2017, 2Hi released three EPs, titled BURN BABY BURN, SELF DESTRUCT, and HIGH. After taking a year off, 2hi released his next EP, LOATHING IN PARADISE in March of 2019. 2020 is the year things started to really take off for 2hi. His 2020 album, 2 Birds, started to gain a lot of traction online, getting noticed by Hip Hop fans and fellow Hip Hop artists around the country. 2 Birds was the first project 2hi uploaded to Spotify; this is the project that put him on the map as a potential rising star. 2hi capitalized on the success of 2 Birds by staying very steady with his output. After releasing a few random singles to start the year, he dropped two projects in 2021, an EP called Key To The Nexus and an album called White Lighter Bad Luck. 2hi followed these two projects up with his EP HEY GANG!, which came out in the fall of last year. 2hi has had a busy 2023 so far, having already released 5 singles this year(I will discuss his two newest singles, ‘Captain Kirk’ and ‘Band-Aid Boy,’ below). 2hi is an artist that deserves all of the attention(and so much more, to be honest) that he is starting to attract, and I believe he could be the next artist from Milwaukee to pop off in a big way.

2hi’s first single of June, ‘Band-aid Boy,’ may be short, but it immediately transports the listener to another dimension for two minutes when it comes on. When a song is only 2 minutes, it has to grab the attention of the listener from the jump and draw them in quickly, and this track definitely does that. ‘Band-aid Boy’ is an extremely psychedelic Cloud Trap song that sounds like it was made on a different planet or in an alternate universe. This song has such an atmospheric and ethereal feeling. The instrumental is driven by beat with a harsh and bass-heavy Trap beat that has such an otherworldly sound, and a simple melody that is super distorted and sounds like it was made on a xylophone. 2hi’s vocals are understated, relaxed, and raspy; his vocals match the instrumental so well, adding to the alienistic ambiance of the song. ‘Band-aid Boy’ is a unique and uncanny Trap song that shows 2hi is totally in his own lane. 2hi’s second single of June is called ‘Captain Kirk.’ This is another song that incorporated elements of early to mid-2010s Trap music and makes it sound very fresh. ‘Captain Kirk’ has a melody that makes me think of the kind of R&B Trap artists like DJ Luke Nasty or MdeinTYO made popular about 7 years ago. The beat on this song reminds me of Retro Trap as well; The pace and way the hi-hats are arranged remind me a lot of the music that Lil Wayne was making in the early 2010s. Even though the melody and beat do have a nostalgic Trap feeling, there are things about this song that makes it feel so current. For one, the amount of distortion on this instrumental would have never been incorporated into the kinds of Trap music that I mentioned earlier. Secondly, 2hi’s vocals make the song sound so present. He has this easy-going, laid-back way of rapping on this song that sounds a lot closer to the Trap artists from today than the artists I mentioned above. Overall, ‘Captain Kirk’ has a sound that can attract newer and older Trap fans because it has elements that can appeal to fans of many different types of the genre. 

When listening to 2hi’s music, it is easy to hear why he is garnering so much attention and starting to make a name for himself. He has such a unique and free-spirited sound that sticks out so much in the Hip Hop landscape today. In a way, he is like former underground Trap legends like Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, and Father, who were also great at incorporating elements of the Trap stars before them and turning them into something no one has heard before(all three of these artists ended up seeing major mainstream success, and I hope the same is true for 2hi). 2hi has a ton of momentum right now and continues to become more popular by the day, and it truly feels like the sky is the limit for him. He is an artist that deserves to be on anyone’s radar that loves up-and-coming Hip Hop artists, and I personally can not wait to see what he does next.