The Kid Laroi

Australian rapper The Kid Laroi was born Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard on August 17, 2003 in the Sydney suburb of Waterloo to a mother of Aboriginal and European descent and a French father. He spent part of his childhood in the outback before returning to the metropolis. In 2015, he took his first steps in music under the pseudonym Charlton. It was then that he met his manager DJ Ladykiller, forming a duo with him called Dream Team. Charlton then changed his artistic identity to the Kid Laroi. When the two artists went their separate ways, the Kid Laroi made another decisive encounter: DJ Ziggy, who enabled him to sign with ART Management. With them, he recorded his first EP, 14 With a Dream. He then moved to Columbia Records and became a protégé of Juice Wrld, who hired him to support his tour. This sudden exposure fostered his emergence and the success of his single "Let Her Go" in 2019. The following year, he released "Diva" (#76), a duet with Lil Tecca, followed by "Go", which he had recorded with Juice Wrld before his death in December 2019. With the latter, he entered the US Billboard chart at #52. "Hate the Other Side", another collaboration with his late friend, reached number ten. In July 2020, the Kid Laroi released his first mixtape, F*ck Love (#1), which was shortly afterwards enhanced with previously unreleased material in an expanded version, featuring, alongside the single "Always Do", a number of high-profile collaborators such as Marshmello on "Feel Something" and "F*ck You, Goodbye" with Machine Gun Kelly. In 2020 and 2021, "Without You" (a duet with Miley Cyrus) and "Stay" (with Justin Bieber), featured on two reissues of the mixtape F*ck Love: F*ck Love (Savage) and F*ck Love 3: Over You, respectively, were successive #1 hits. In 2022, "Thousand Miles" reached #15 in the US, before the singles that would become part of his debut album The First Time (2023, #26 in the U.S.), including "Love Again" (#6) and "Too Much" with Jungkook and Central Cee (#10). The deluxe version added new collaborations with Future, Baby Drill and Robert Glasper, as well as a new hit with the track "Girls", which reached #18 in Australia and #51 on the Billboard Hot 100.