Chances are that whatever you got for your last birthday, it doesn’t compare to what The Kid LAROI got upon turning 16 in 2019: a trip to Greece, and a feature from Juice WRLD.
The young Aussie upstart and the late Chicago superstar already had a history. LAROI had opened shows for Juice in Sydney and Melbourne earlier in the year, and had become the latest signing by Juice’s managers, Grade A Productions. But one night last August, Juice surprised The Kid with a freestyled verse for his brand new song “Go,” the first taste of LAROI’s mixtape F--k Love, which drops later this month. The music video, out today, opens with footage from that night in Greece. “That’s a $200,000 dollar gift, bro!” Juice says with a laugh before he lays down his vocal.
In retrospect, of course, the feature was even more priceless. Only four months after that gift, one of hip-hop’s brightest stars was gone, a sudden death that was a gut punch to music and the culture, and devastated Juice’s family and friends, including Grade A and LAROI, who to this day calls Juice his “big brother.”
As a keepsake, “Go” sparkles, with the mentor’s voice blending effortlessly with his protégé's. The Steve Cannon-directed visual alternates between heart-rending road footage of Juice and LAROI, and more recent scenes, shot in Los Angeles, of LAROI with a biker crew, and alone on a balcony, in front of a mic that recalls the one used by Juice at the beginning of the clip. It’s melancholy and affecting, but somehow, also lighthearted.
It’s been a whirlwind year and a half for LAROI (real name: Charlton Howard). Until the one-two punch of Juice’s death and the coronavirus outbreak, he had been on a steady, upward trajectory: a record deal through Grade A with Sony Music, a pairing with Lil Skies on “Moving," those support dates for Juice (in both January and November of last year), a life-altering move across the Pacific, from Sydney to Los Angeles, a spot on Rolling Loud’s inaugural New York festival, and a major label debut single, “Let Her Go,” with a video directed by Gen Z rap’s premier lensman Cole Bennett.
The two paired again for the even bigger hit “Diva," LAROI’s January collaboration with Lil Tecca, which featured the two rappers playing hilariously off each other in a trailer park. Then came COVID, and a global quarantine that threatened to put the brakes on a young career in the process of blowing up. Nonetheless, LAROI has stayed remarkably visible over the past couple of months -- scoring a viral hit from out of the blue in March with “Addison Rae," named after the TikTok starlet, followed by “Fade Away," a musing on quick fame and fortune with NYC hotshot Lil Tjay, with whom The Kid toured in early 2020.
This month promises an even bigger spotlight with F--k Love. It’s LAROI’s first collection of songs since 2018’s independently released EP 14 With A Dream. The new project – melodically even stronger, sporting immediate, infectious hooks – is steeped in relationship drama. Charlton’s love life seems about as active and turbulent as you’d expect from a 16-year-old with newfound fame, particularly since his relocation to the City of Angels. Still, he's never been more vulnerable than on tracks like “Erase U," “Too Scared," “Wish” and the tuneful “Tell My Why.”
It wasn’t that long ago that LAROI’s life was very different. For much of his early years, Howard and his family bounced from one hardscrabble New South Wales community to another, including the South Sydney suburb of Waterloo (the place he most considers “home") and even spent four years in far-off-the-beaten-path Broken Hill, a outback mining town that was not exactly a hotbed of hip-hop. But starting with raps over beats recorded on his mom’s phone and posted to SoundCloud, one thing led to another, and attention truly ramped up when LAROI placed third in the 2018 edition of “Unearthed High," a competition for high school artists by renowned Aussie...