To Hobo Johnson, Earth’s imminent demise won’t be because of climate change or nuclear war. Instead, the apocalypse will arrive the next time a girl he likes doesn’t text him back. Hobo Johnson is the product of a section of a pop culture fandom whose life was changed by a Kid Cudi lyric, went to Warped Tour once, started shopping at Zumiez, and learned about love from 500 Days of Summer. The 24-year-old’s music is a genre-bending mash of spoken-word pop and Lin-Manuel Miranda-style raps, backed by a versatile band called the Lovemakers that play punk, folk, and jazz with the same sexless energy as the group of dads that played your local church fundraiser. But the core of Hobo Johnson’s music is his emotional honesty and an occasional ability to detail his battles with crippling insecurities. This would be relatable and maybe even affecting if his material wasn’t all sourced from jealousy and disappointment at the women that continue to pass up on the good guys like him.

Last year, the California-raised Hobo Johnson entered NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest with a live backyard video for a song titled “Peach Scone.” His entry went viral on social media garnering millions of plays in less than a week, but the response to the video was polarizing. A few people reasonably called out his insincere approach to rap. “My name is Hobo Johnson, I’m a rapper/I’m actually not a rapper, I like to say musician,” he raps, while implying falsely that his use of live instruments distances himself from the genre. But the majority of the reactions to Hobo Johnson—born Frank Lopes Jr.—was warm. He was positioned as a hopeless romantic, despite “Peach Scone” being a possessive story about his falling in love with a girl who has a boyfriend only because she was the first person to show him any attention. The track features his teary-eyed emotion and his brand of quirky comedy. He became the latest love of moody teenagers desperate to find music that reciprocated their temperamental and lonely online aesthetic.

The Fall of Hobo Johnson is his first album since his viral moment, and it stays true to “Peach Scone”’s unstated goal of making music for guys who are angry that a person they’ve never spoken to doesn’t love them back. Fame hasn’t changed Hobo Johnson’s view on relationships. At all. “Fear the girl who he really thinks is a different species, she’ll rip your heart out,” he says on “Mover Awayer,” justifying her decision to ghost him. His songwriting is mostly composed of ramblings that could double as overly deep black-screen background Instagram stories: “She makes my Mondays feel like Fridays,” and, “Every single guy she’s ever loved to me sounds really fucking dumb.”

If you haven’t noticed, Hobo Johnson doesn’t take rejection well. On the surface he does—he fills his ex-crushes’ inboxes with shallow compliments and warm wishes. “I really hope that you find happiness,” he says in the opening line of “Happiness.” Though that’s before he spends the remaining three minutes spiraling, placing the guilt on her for not sharing those feelings through pill-popping and drinking himself to near-death. These emotions don’t connect or make you think of similar times from your own past. Instead, you just feel sorry for him.

Aside from his never-ending heartbreak, the other major theme on The Fall of Hobo Johnson is death. It often comes across melodramatic, especially on the cliche and unimaginative “Moonlight,” which features him in the afterlife: “And if I go to hell I will think of you, I will think of you and everything will be OK,” he says moodily. “Sorry, My Dear” is similarly heavy-handed and made unlistenable by scratchy voice-alteration and production that is like if Bon Iver retired the weed for Juul pods.

What Hobo Johnson does have going for him is that there’s no artist within the reach of the mainstream consciousness that sounds like him. He laughs, screams, and cries like an open-mic slam poet. But the last thing the music world needs is more “I don’t understand girls” rap that feels it’s above the genre. His goals are mundane: On “I Want a Dog,” he talks about his life goal to be married with a wife, a dog, a house on a hill, and a kid that plays guitar. His approach to relationships would make him the villain of every reality television dating show and the Lovemakers are probably set to be the first band replaced by artificial intelligence. Now Hobo Johnson is left to wait for the next viral moment that keeps his world spinning.

Buy: Rough Trade

(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)