The Kid Laroi was born Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard in Waterloo, New South Wales, Australia. He adopted his stage name from the Kamilaroi, the Aboriginal Australian people he shares a distant heritage with through his maternal great-great grandfather.
Laroi's parents both worked in the music industry. His father, Nick Howard, had a brief recording career, releasing the pop album Sound Of Breathing in 1995, before moving on to producing and engineering for Australian acts like Bardot and Delta Goodrem, as well as American rappers like Nelly and Fat Joe. His mother, Sloane Howard, was a record executive who managed Scott Cain, winner of the Aussie singing competition Popstars.
Laroi had a hardscrabble childhood. After his parents' divorce when he was 4 years old, his mother struggled financially, sometimes selling drugs to make ends meet. With the help of his uncle, he attended private institutions like the Sacred Heart College in Adelaide, but had to leave when money got tight after his uncle's tragic murder in 2015. He bounced around to different schools and, after he and his mother were kicked out of public housing over noise complaints, couch-surfed at various houses for the next two years. He took a part-time job at a fruit store to help out, but his eye was already on a music career.
Laroi set his sights on an international career, so he knew he had to make connections with VIPs outside of Australia. When he knew big artists were coming into town, the savvy teen did anything he could to play them his music, including staking out hotel rooms and finagling his way backstage. In one successful scheme, he enlisted the help of a female friend to sneak his music to American rapper Swae Lee at his hotel. Lee was duly impressed and ended up collaborating with the young singer a few years later on the unreleased "Attention."
Laroi was a day away from turning 15 when he independently released his debut EP, 14 With A Dream, on SoundCloud and YouTube in 2018. He got a boost of notoriety as a finalist in the Triple J Unearthed talent competition.
He opened for the popular emo rapper Juice WRLD when the "
Lucid Dreams (Forget Me)" hitmaker was on tour in Australia, and the pair became friends. When Laroi moved to LA, Juice took the budding artist under his wing. They lived together for several months while Laroi intently studied his mentor's skills in the studio. Juice's 2019 death from an overdose inspired Laroi's heartache number "Tell Me Why" on his 2020 debut mixtape,
F*ck Love.
F*ck Love peaked at #1 on the ARIA albums chart in Laroi's native Australia, making the 17-year-old the youngest Aussie solo artist to achieve the feat. In the US, it eventually reached #1 in 2021 after multiple reissues.
A pair of strategic collaborations helped Laroi breakthrough to the mainstream. He landed his first Top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100 with the help of Miley Cyrus, who appeared on a remix of the TikTok favorite "
Without You" in 2021. After partnering with Justin Bieber on "
Unstable," from Bieber's
Justice album, Laroi teamed up with him again on "
Stay" for his own mixtape,
F*ck Love 3: Over You. The single topped the Hot 100, giving Laroi his first #1 hit.
From 2020 to 2023, Laroi dated TikTok influencer Katarina Deme. Their breakup inspired the songs on his first full-length album,
The First Time (2023), including the lead single "
Love Again." The following year, he started a romance with Canadian singer Tate McRae.
The 2024 documentary Kids Are Growing Up: A Story About A Kid Named Laroi chronicles the singer's rise to fame and his personal struggles on the way to the top. It was directed by Michael D. Ratner, who also helmed the 2020 YouTube docuseries Justin Bieber: Seasons.
He told GQ he wears sunglasses to boost his confidence when he gets nervous around crowds of people. His favorites tend to be made by Louis Vuitton.
One of his favorite books is the self-help cult classic The 48 Laws Of Power by Robert Greene. Rather than adopting the cutthroat instructional as a manual for his own life, he uses it as a tool to recognize toxic traits in other people.
Despite his larger-than-life stage presence, The Kid Laroi is actually quite reserved and experiences significant anxiety, even in front of cameras. He admitted to 60 Minutes Australia he feels more at ease performing for massive audiences than he does sitting down for interviews, describing himself as "the most uncomfortable person ever" in front of a camera. Laroi often adopts a sort of "superhero" persona when he's on stage, giving him confidence he doesn't always feel in day-to-day life.
