From touring through his continent to travelling around the world with Juice Wrld, this rapper has been on one hell of a journey. Charlton Kennth Jeremy Howard, also called “The Kid Laroi” is a 17-year-old artist known for his song “Without You”.
Up-and-coming rapper, The Kid Laroi has recently had a momentary rise to fame with many new listeners. He is now working even harder to achieve his end goal: to be the biggest artist in the world. One of his friends points out that “he spent probably 40 minutes just going over the same line in his music. That’s a person that wants to be the greatest.” Laroi focuses on quality and works hard for what he strives to do while not straying from his roots.
Laroi revealed in an interview that his life was not always this luxurious. When he was young, his parents got divorced and Laroi moved in with his mom, from that point on his dad was never really part of his childhood. He was exposed to the drug world, with his mom cooking meth right next to his bedroom. The family struggled financially, resulting in a rough childhood. “[We] didn’t have literally sh*t,” he said. “Some days there’d be no food in the house.”
Laroi used music to get through his rough childhood and had a passion for singing. When he was 11 his uncle told him to follow singing and see how far it would take him. His uncle was later murdered, the details of which are not publicly known. Laroi would think about his uncle’s advice often.
He partnered up with Marcus Jr, an Australian producer and rapper to form the short-lived duo Dream Team. Halfway through grade 9 he dropped out of school. The same year he submitted a demo track to a radio station contest and made it to the final round where he got to perform on stage. At this point he came up with his stage name. “The Kid Laroi.” This came from the native Australian group Kamilaroi, where his mom is from.
The Lid Laroi had a stroke of luck, Brandon George Dickinson, better known as the rapper Lil Bibby, heard a snippet of Laroi’s track and was so blown away that he helped the young artist get signed with Columbia records and Grade A productions. With Lil Bibby’s help he produced his first song “Blessing.” With his new manager, Pete Jideonwo, he wrote more songs and was often influenced by Lil Bibby. The Kid Laroi states, Bibby was like his big brother. He also started making music videos and collabs with other artists.
Laroi had the amazing opportunity to open for Juice Wrld in his Austrailian tours after his manager arranged for him to do so. When first meeting Juice Wrld he was a such a huge loss for words that he said he “fanned out like a mother f*cker.” He then went on to tour with Juice for three months and eventually moved in with him to record songs together. Juice Wrld mentored him, teaching him how to freestyle and having a significant impact on his music.
“It was fire, it was cool as f*ck” Laroi said.
The Kid Laroi has released one album, F*ck Love (Savage), a collection full of tracks about heartbreak and loss in the process of growing up. “I’m not the one to solve your problems, cause I’m f*cked up too” he sings on “Always do.” Laroi states how his inspiration for this album is about moving on and how to “get over sh*t”.
His most popular song “Without You” blew up as a Tik Tok audio because of the line, “So there you go. Can’t make a wife out of a hoe.” The song is about losing someone and having to leave when you still love them, but you know they are toxic and shouldn’t be in your life. Many Tik Tokers could relate.
Another popular song, “So Done” contains themes about making mistakes, being in love, and breaking up with someone because you can’t handle them anymore. On the charts it reached #3 in for Australia one of the top ten singles.
Laroi has been lucky enough with his circumstances that he has had the opportunity to collab with many artists, for instance his first collab was a song called “Diva” with Lil Tecca, and one of his most popular collabs is the song “Go” with Juice Wrld. Other people Laroi have collaborated with are Lil Mosey, Machine Gun Kelly, and Corbin.
“Addison Rae,” is probably one of his most notable songs. He partnered with well-known Tik Tok personality Addison Rae to create it. This song was originally a joke that started when he recorded the two lines, “I need a bad b*tch, Addison Rae. Lil Shawty the baddest, but she got away.” Laroi posted it on Tik Tok thinking nothing of it, but the next morning Addison had posted a video of her showing her mom the audio. Addison’s fans continued to ask when the song was being dropped so Laroi worked with Addison to record the track and it was released a week later.
Laroi has gone from a struggling high school dropout to an internationally recognized rapper at just the age of 17.
“Some people call me kind of crazy. They’re like, dude you’re seventeen, just f*cking have fun and just be a f*cking teenager and I’m just like… no. I want to be the biggest artist in the world.”
Credit: The kid LAROI / Grade A productions
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