A Kid Named Laroi review: How a kid from Waterloo captured the attention of a generation with short-attention spans
The Kid Laroi has got what it takes to capture a generation with minute attention spans, so we should all sit up straight.
Young people these days cop a lot of flak for being entitled and lazy, but young creatives should be excluded from this narrative. Just look at the music industry.
Millennial Taylor Swift is now 34 and has been working since she was 14. No wonder her Eras tour – which recently had Sydney and Melbourne in a friendly and friendship bracelet chokehold after she knocked the sequin boots off hundreds and thousands of fans – is tipped to rake in more than $7 billion.
Over in hip-hop land is an artist called The Kid Laroi, a 20-year-old Australian who grew up “running around Waterloo and Redfern” in Sydney before his divorced parents identified his talent for singing and songwriting and moved the family to LA when he was 15. It was there he pursued, and achieved, his dream of becoming what The New York Times calls Justin Bieber’s “mop-topper younger doppelganger”.
He did all that, plus recorded a song with Bieber (Stay spent six of its 17 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US in 2021), before turning 18 and releasing his first album.
We learn this via a new documentary about Charlton “The Kid Laroi” Howard, a warts-and-all look under the mop of peroxide hair and behind the designer shades (which the precocious performer wears inside, at night).
Kids Are Growing Up: A Story About A Kid Named Laroi has been years in the making and charts the evolution of the teenage superstar from hoodie-wearing, frustrated Australian Performing Arts Grammar Schoolboy to LA wunderkind, embellished with ironic tattoos, Cheshire cat veneers and more accents than Madonna during her Guy Ritchie phase.
The film is based on footage shot from 2019 through to Laroi’s current success and includes interviews with him, Bieber and singer Post Malone (who allowed Laroi to tattoo “I need to s..t” on his leg). It also features the rapper’s father, Nick Howard, who was on his own path to singing stardom the 80s but focused on a career as a sound engineer; he has worked with Delta Goodrem and Bardot.
It’s a production made in a similar mould to that of the recent David Beckham Netflix series.
When subject and Auteur have a connection and a relationship, the result can be brilliantly insightful, captivating and entertaining, and so it is here. The viewer gets the sense Laroi feels at ease with director and producer Michael Ratner, who is no stranger to the music industry, himself being a Grammy nominee.
It’s because of this connection the show is seriously watchable, even for those unfamiliar with Laroi’s life and body of work (or the fact he had a McDonalds meal made in his honour his sellout Australian stadium tour in 2022). The film takes us through that tour, when the singer’s Aussie lilt returns as he wanders around his old inner-city stomping ground with his glamorous (now ex) girlfriend model Katarina Deme and film crew.
“All I ever wanted to do was sell out the Enmore Theatre,” he says, despite being a Grammy-nominated artist with more than four million online fans.
While there are plenty of moments of triumph in this documentary, the highlights are the low points.
The production documents the singer dealing with mental health struggles – including suicide ideation – and the 2019 death of his mentor Juice World (pronounced “world”). It shows him seeking therapy and then meeting Deme: “A sad boy met a sad girl and now we’re a happy couple”.
Laroi talks candidly about the pressure he feels to perform, to do well – for his fans and family, and to be truly happy.
“Maybe I’m just feeling lost. Maybe I’m just going through what maybe most people my age go through,” he says.
“I guess the difference is that this is the time for people to figure out what they want to do in life. I already know what I’m doing in life. I have a job, a family and a lot of people I support and stuff like that, so I don’t really have time to be a lost teenager. I’m just lost with a job.
“I’ve only been alive 20 years … it feels like 80.”
The drive of this kid makes an F1 team look like a horse and buggy outfit stuck in neutral.
While the media landscape may have changed, the music industry is still a brutal machine. Not only does he need to make and sell records, he needs to be “liked” and “followed” online – it’s a relentless beast but he never loses his humanity or humble nature despite only just having entering adulthood.
When a new single debuts during the film, a gathered crowd of hundreds of screaming fans sings the song line by line at the public premiere of the film clip, which racks up more than 200,000 streams on Spotify in its first eight minutes online. He then dashes backstage to meet a fan called Ethan who has driven 10 hours to see him. After telling Ethan about how he manages his stress and cares for his mental health and self-esteem, it’s the fan who asks to call it a day.
“When I’m having a bad day I just listen to your music and it helps me feel better but do you mind if I head out? I’m pretty tired.”
Je suis Ethan.
Laroi is not tired though; in fact, he has timed the release of this film with new music.
It’s true that adults work hard. But the Kid works harder.
Lifeline: 13 11 14
Kids Are Growing Up: A Story About A Kid Named Laroi is streaming now on Amazon Prime.
