As I enter Northeastern University's AfterHours venue, I’m met with bad news. James D’Elia, my colleague and Green Line Records' Head of Events, informs me that our headliner of the night, The Hellp, has stormed out of the building. They’ve returned to their tour van, angry that they’re hours away from performing in a half-Starbucks half-venue in Curry Student Center.
“We just sold out Irving Plaza two nights ago,” lead singer Noah Dillon explains later in their greenroom. “People were frothing at the mouth to even see us. Now we’re in a Starbucks with kids who are studying for like, I don’t even know.”
“We’re DJing tonight,” bandmate Chandler Ransom-Lucy informs me. “It's taken our soul to be able to put on a live show at the quality we do… I’m not setting up five synthesizers in a Starbucks, we’ve come too far to do that.”
“This isn’t our ‘what the fuck is up Denny’s’ moment.” Noah chimes in. “We’re grown-ass men, who are doing a very serious artistic endeavor. There’s respect to this.”
None of this is particularly surprising. In the weeks leading up to this moment, I’ve been reading and watching their past interviews to get to know more about them. Commenters across the internet call them “insufferable” and “pretentious” — it’s hard not to see where they’re coming from. With the particular explosion in popularity of their fashion interview with Emma Rogue, as well as viral clips from their other recent DJ sets, the hate has piled on more than ever. Their egotistical remarks about their creative abilities and oddly controversial viewpoints have repulsed the common viewer. Ultimately, they come across as incredibly niche.
“We’ve been hated on for many years,” Noah says. “Of course, Chandler and I are great targets. If I saw Chandler and I walking around, I’d be like, ‘fuck those guys,’ like I get it. I get we look dismissive from afar, but up close, it’s special.”
Many fans would agree — over their nine years as a band, The Hellp has garnered a cult following. If it weren't obvious from their sold-out tour, just take a look online; in their subreddit, fans call their latest project, LL, the “best album of all time.” Speculative YouTube comments reference different Instagram live videos and Discord announcements to determine the bands’ relationship with their contemporaries, trying to pick apart who they may collaborate with and who they might be trying to avoid.
“It’s easier for me to take hate than love honestly,” Noah explains. “I’m just, like, an insecure guy, and like, it’s hard for me to take compliments because I’m always in my head thinking that everything that we do, and I do, is less than.”
He makes this clear as he details the process of creating LL; what was originally meant to be an EP turned into more of an album-sized project as the duo continued to work on it. They hold themselves to a high standard, as they compare their project to the works of Radiohead, Elvis, The Beatles, Kanye West, and Michael Jackson.
“I know we’re the best band on earth right now,” Noah says. “But in that same breath, we’re like, nothing at the same time.” He uncertainly cites Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The Over-Soul” to explain to me that the greatest men are full of contradictions and paradoxes.
“We dropped an album better than all of our contemporaries probably could ever drop,” Chandler tells me. “To be completely fucking honest, it’s like none of these other fools even know why they’re making music.”
This kind of rockstar-esque arrogance seems to have faded in the online music scene that The Hellp finds themselves in today. The modern underground maintains a trend of avoiding interviews and sharing little about personality or artistic goals. Experimental electronic groups like Death Grips and Crystal Castles have contributed to this precedent - many Crystal Castles interviews tend to come off as very halfhearted, while Death Grips have famously only given two public interviews. On the hip-hop side of the underground, many are influenced by Playboi Carti’s similar behavior. With these names being extremely influential on the modern up-and-coming musician, many have elected to follow suit by avoiding interviews and trying to build a shroud of mystery as their public image. To see the return of the opinionated, leather-jacketed band ready to passionately exclaim their thoughts and goals is refreshing - in fact, it almost feels like an act, possibly a marketing ploy.
“It may seem counterintuitive,” explains Noah. “Because like, we’re dressed a certain way, and obviously we’re a brand, you know? But we don’t really think about it that way. We’ve always been like this.”
But this kind of disclosure doesn’t come without consequence (besides coming across as narcissistic). With such an obsessive and cult-like fanbase, the duo feels that they are constantly misunderstood and overanalyzed.
“The more we say, the less people understand us,” Noah says. “How people perceive us… they’re totally off-base.”
“I sleep well at night knowing that we’re never gonna be understood while we’re here in the present,” Chandler elaborates. “We’re only gonna be understood 20 years from now. Not to sound like an arrogant douchebag who thinks he’s god, but I know for certain that this album is gonna be studied a decade from now. And all the kids are gonna be like ‘how the fuck did they make that shit?’ That’s our curse.”
As the band answers my questions, their time to take the stage finally comes. Lighting the venue with only their “LL” stage lights, they spin a DJ set that captures the idea of the indie sleaze resurgence that they find themselves a part of. In between their own hits and 10cust and lustr remixes, they throw in “The Adults Are Talking” by The Strokes, and end their set with Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place.” These seemingly random, off-base track selections perfectly align with their niche image. As the night comes to a close, one thing is clear to me: The Hellp are the epitome of the modern rockstar.
