Nothing keeps Gen Z superstar the Kid LAROI down

REVIEW

Here’s five of his songs to check out

2022.10.04

Credit

Article. Kim Doheon (Music Critic)

Photo Credit. SB Projects

Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard was born in Australia in 2003 to his father, a sound engineer, and mother, a talent manager. Howard didn’t have an easy childhood: His parents separated when he was four and were divorced by the time he turned seven. The uncle who had been a stand-in father figure for Howard was tragically murdered in 2015. The family then moved to Broken Hill, Howard’s mother’s hometown in New South Wales, where she once made a living selling drugs on the street. At school, Howard was a target of bullying.

Instead of getting discouraged, he pursued his dream of music. He was already a big fan of hip hop from artists like Fugees, Eminem, Erykah Badu and Lil Wayne thanks to his mom’s influence. He dropped out of the Australian Performing Arts Grammar School to make money working part-time jobs but continued to record his own rap songs on his mom’s phone and then upload them to SoundCloud.

All his effort paid off. Howard signed a formal contract with Sony Music Australia in 2017, marking the start of his career. He made a name for himself throughout the country the following year when he reached the final round of triple j Unearthed, a launch pad for new Australian artists. After working under the mentorship of Juice WRLD, he released his first mixtape, F*CK LOVE, which was produced by top names like benny blanco, Marshmello and Cashmere Cat, and which earned him interest from pop stars like Miley Cyrus and Machine Gun Kelly.

“I want to be one of the biggest artists in the world before I’m 21,” he told Billboard in a 2021 interview, and it seems he’s achieved that dream. With “STAY,” one of the biggest hits of 2021, he’s gone from promising newcomer to superstar and leader in the world of pop music.

Howard performs under the name the Kid LAROI. Below are five songs he’ll be performing at his first concert in Korea, taking place at KBS Arena on October 6.

“STAY”

Four consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, a record time to one billion streams globally on Spotify, the first Australian artist to hit number one on the Hot 100 in 40 years—by any measure, “STAY,” already a staple of the 2020s, performed phenomenally. Clocking in at a mere 2:21, the song, with its singing-rap style that touches on Generation Z angst, was worked on by major hitmakers Cashmere Cat, Charlie Puth and Omer Fedi and features Justin Bieber, who says his role was more of a supportive one. The song even garnered LAROI a nomination for the 2022 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Amazingly enough, it’s LAROI’s first major single. After picking up some influence from his exchanges with other songwriters, he worked out ideas for the song by casually playing out melodies on his keyboard using Pro Tools. Bieber was all too happy to help him finish up the song, and when news of their collaboration broke on May 31, 2021, excitement around the song was already brewing ahead of its release. Days later, on June 2, the full song leaked on Discord, but it did nothing to stop its runaway success.

“STAY” topped the charts in 22 countries, including LAROI’s home, Australia. Interestingly, the song found massive popularity in Korea as well. It was the first song by an overseas artist for that year to top the Gaon Digital Chart, sat at number one on the Streaming Chart for six consecutive weeks and topped streaming service Melon’s weekly chart for seven weeks. Korean fans found their sympathies roused by the combination of the newcomer’s sweet voice crooning over a breakup and flourishes by Bieber, himself well known in the country.

“Diva” (ft. Lil Tecca)

The highly ambitious director of the music video for “Diva,” Cole Bennett, has been an avid blogger since 2013 and runs a community focused on hip hop. Born in 1996, Bennett began uploading music videos, interviews and live performances by up-and-coming rappers in his hometown of Chicago, Illinois through his platform Lyrical Lemonade. After he pushed Juice WRLD’s song “Lucid Dreams” to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, the relatively unknown Bennett suddenly found himself getting attention from big names like Eminem, J. Cole and Kanye West.

Once LAROI started down a path with Lyrical Lemonade with his Bennett-directed “Let Her Go,” hip hop fans quickly began to see him as Juice WRLD’s successor. Of all LAROI’s Lyrical Lemonade releases, he’s received the most attention for “Diva,” which features rapper Lil Tecca. The hip hop single, driven by its short, crunchy guitar riff, proved to be more than enough to bring him into the music market and keep him there until his mixtape came out shortly after. The music video currently has over 72 million views on YouTube and is certified gold in Australia and the United States. It’s also through this song that many hip hop fans first became familiar with LAROI.

“GO”

In 2020, “GO,” one of the tracks off LAROI’s first mixtape, F*CK LOVE, made it to number 52 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song is a particularly meaningful song for LAROI, as it features his mentor, the late rapper Juice WRLD, to whom it is dedicated. Juice WRLD had died of a drug overdose on December 8 the year prior.

LAROI and WRLD first met when the latter was touring Australia in 2018 and 2019. Sensing the up-and-coming LAROI’s potential, WRLD took the young Australian with him to Los Angeles to help him develop into a better hip hop artist by assisting him with his music, rap and production for a year. WRLD recommended him for the Rolling Loud festival in Miama and New York and helped make it possible for LAROI to upload his video with Lyrical Lemonade. WRLD is also where LAROI picked up his emo side and melancholy melodies from.

The video for “GO” is a memorial for LAROI’s late life mentor, featuring clips of WRLD recording his parts and shots of LAROI as a kid. Later in 2020, LAROI released “Reminds Me of You” in memory of his friend with a verse recorded by WRLD before his death.

“WITHOUT YOU”

“WITHOUT YOU” marked the first time one of LAROI’s songs would reach the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 and his big break in the US music market. The song refines the Post Malone school of singing rap by making it more emotionally vulnerable and adding a touch of minor acoustic guitar with lyrics that touch upon Gen Z’s sore spots. Included as a track on a deluxe edition of the album, F*CK LOVE (SAVAGE), it was the fifth single the album spawned.

One of LAROI’s frequent collaborators is Israeli record producer Omer Fedi. Born in 2000, Fedi is a relative newcomer who has had a hand in major hits from artists including Sam Hook, Ella Mai, 24kGoldn, iann dior and Lil Nas X. LAROI asked Fedi to write a song in the style of Australian superstar Sia and Fedi wrote the chords for guitar. The vocals were recorded within a day.

There was nothing to add to or change with the song and it took off to amazing popularity. It went viral on TikTok to an unimaginable degree toward the end of 2020. In March 2021, LAROI put out a remix with pop star Miley Cyrus as a single and it went as high as number eight on the Billboard chart. It was number two in the UK, just behind Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license.” LAROI’s brand of emo hip hop is accessible to all.

“Thousand Miles”

Following the success of “STAY,” the song “Thousand Miles” was released as a single by Columbia Records earlier this year on April 22. The song comes with a host of helpers, including guitarist Andrew Watt, who won the 2021 Grammy for Producer of the Year; producer Louis Bell, who has partnered with Post Malone and Kanye West in the past; and veteran engineer Manny Marroquin, who also helped master TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s minisode 2: Thursday’s Child.

“Thousand Miles” tells the story of how LAROI fell in love at first sight with current girlfriend and TikToker Katarina Deme and cleverly reveals the way in which he nervously told her he wanted to share their lives’ purpose together. Deme acts alongside LAROI in the video. This teenage love song, a more relaxed release following LAROI’s rise to success, proved popular, reaching number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 21 on the UK Singles Chart.

LAROI used to be sad, but that’s all over. Out of a dreary and difficult childhood and a painful goodbye to a mentor and friend was born a stronger, more mature rapper. The Kid LAROI, whose rough mix of rock and hip hop infused with Juice WRLD’s spirit takes a sincere look at what it means to be young, is just getting started. He entered the music world like a raging comet and now excitement is running high for the teen pop star’s concert in Korea, coming October 6.