Don’t tell the roughnecks, but it’s true: hip-hop was built for romantic tale-spinners. From Slick Rick to Jay-Z to Kanye and Tyler, the Creator, rappers and singers who can articulate relationship drama have found the open-ended quality of a hip-hop verse to be ideal for their storytelling. A good, detailed story about a relationship gone wrong is always compelling — but add rhymes from a deft vocalist, and it becomes positively spellbinding. Star 2 is an artist like that. He specializes in rich, emotionally resonant narratives, and even if there’s an embarrassing personal detail to relate, he’ll never shy away from telling the story exactly as it happened. He’s not afraid to let his audience know what he’s going through, right down to his examinations of the smallest and finest cracks in his broken heart.

About “I Wanna Get F’D Up”

For instance, on “I Wanna Get F’d Up,” his gorgeous latest single, he lays out the dynamics of a relationship in crisis: she’s cheated, he’s been on the road, they’re at odds, they’re probably not going to work things out, and the narrator is likely to drown himself in a puddle of booze. Nobody is totally in the wrong, and nobody is unimpeachable, and no superhero is coming to save the day — and a lovelorn Star 2 sings like he knows it. Candor like that is bound to endear a talented vocalist to his audience, and this Thai-born, San Diego-based artist has been accumulating dedicated fans at a remarkable rate. “I Wanna Get F’d Up” builds on the success of “Missin U” and “WTF Is Love,” two prior 2021 singles that sustained and extended the kind of ruminative late-night vibe that all estranged lovers will immediately recognize. The protagonist of these tales is shattered and confused, but somehow, his faith in romance remains intact.