Pop star The Kid Laroi plans victory lap of Australian arenas with End of the World tour in May

Three years after he left Australia to follow his dream of conquering the US, the Kid Laroi will come home to headline arenas.

The Kid Laroi checks off another dream on his Pop Star to-do list with the announcement of his End Of The World tour which will land in Australian next May.

Just hours after he opened the 2021 MTV VMAs with pop bro Justin Bieber, the 18-year-old Stay chart star confirmed he will be headlining hometown arenas with his first shows here since he opened for his late mentor Juice WRLD in 2019.

Since then, the Los Angeles-based Laroi has generated more than five billion streams with a succession of hit singles from his F*ck Love mixtape trilogy.

Are you even a rapper if you don’t have red carpet bling? Kid Laroi rocked the MTV VMAs. Picture: AFP.

His attempts to come back to Australia to share his success with his diehard fans, some who have supported his career since he first uploaded his songs to hip hop nursery SoundCloud as a 14-year-old, have been thwarted by our border closures.

Laroi has only recently started big gigs, performing to hundreds of thousands of people at the Rolling Loud festival in Miami in July and then the Reading festival in the UK last month.

He said seeing fans sing his lyrics and bounce along to his songs was more rewarding than the plethora of pop No. 1s and streaming stats he has collected over the past year.

Laroi put in a solid performance to open the MTV VMAs. Picture: Getty

“The numbers thing is cool but you don’t really realise what it is until you see thousands of people singing the words and you see their faces and what it means to them,” he said.

“The way they are singing that stuff, you don’t get to see that on the internet.”

The First Nations artist has been a proud pop ambassador for Australian artists since his breakthrough with hits including Go, with Juice WRLD, Without You (which got a remix boost with Miley Cyrus) and Stay with Bieber, which has spent nine weeks at the summit of the ARIA charts.

When Stay debuted at No. 1, Laroi’s thank you post also served as an opportunity to shout out “a couple of other upcoming Australian artists and put you all in tune”, tagging rappers Youngn Lipz, Onefour, Sahxl and singer Blessed.

“Australia is a big part of me and it’s not very often that this gets to happen to somebody from where I’m from,” he said.

“I’m just really proud to be from where I’m from and doing what I’m doing and to represent because I think it should happen more for Australian artists.”

A hooded Justin Bieber performed Stay with his lil pop bro Laroi. Picture: Getty.

Besides the obligatory pyros on stage – and his rider request of a ball pit backstage – you can expect Laroi to indulge his love of fashion for his first big arena gigs.

He picked up the distressed blue, green and white striped jumper for his Reading performance the day before at a street market.

And he rocked the leather trend – always a music awards’ red carpet classic – at the MTV VMAs, with his trademark big glasses and some silver cross bling.

“I love clothes, I was always into clothes as a kid and I wanted to design my own clothes. That was definitely a dream,” he said.

Street market one day, fashion statement to 100,000 festival fans the next. Kid Laroi loves fashun. Picture: C Brandon/Redferns.

It is a rare luxury for a teen artist who has blown up worldwide in a year to have enough songs to fill a 90 minute headlining set.

Before he has even released his official “debut album”, Laroi has put out three instalments of his F*ck Love mixtape in 12 months, kicking off with the original in July 2020, followed by the F*ck Love (Savage) edition in November last year and finally F*ck Love 3 (Over You) six weeks ago.

That’s more than 35 songs and he’s keen to have his debut album ready to drop for the world tour.

Tickets for the tour go on sale this week. Picture: Supplied

“Hopefully yeah. Life and everything that’s going on around me just inspires me more and more to keep making stuff,” Laroi said of his prolific output.

“I just came back from the UK and I did four shows, and one of the festivals was like over 100,000 people and seeing all the fans, shit, that’s an album.”

The End of the World will kick off in the US before it heads here, opening in his hometown at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena and then plays Perth’s RAC Arena on May 30, Adelaide Entertainment Centre on June 1, Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena on June 3 and Brisbane’s Riverstage on June 6 with Telstra pre-sale tickets available from Wednesday and general tickets on Friday.

Originally published as Pop star The Kid Laroi plans victory lap of Australian arenas with End of the World tour in May