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‘I missed out on being a kid’: The Kid Laroi on fame, fans and coming home to Australia
The 18-year-old Kamilaroi rapper, whose fans include Elton John and Justin Bieber, is back in Sydney – starting a world tour and dealing with the ‘obviously insane’ reception
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email and listen to our podcastIn the video for his latest single, Thousand Miles, The Kid Laroi does battle with himself. As if both Tom and Jerry, in a series of slapstick sketches the 18-year-old Kamilaroi rapper (real name Charlton Howard) flattens himself with a bulldozer, ties himself to a runaway car, and electrocutes himself with a metallic doorknob, his mop of blond hair zapping into a comically oversized bouffant.
With dialled-up visuals and gargantuan production values befitting an artist who has dominated charts both in Australia and the US – he is the first Indigenous Australian to top Billboard’s Hot 100 – it’s a hammy literalisation of Thousand Miles’ lyrics, lamenting his tendency to self-sabotage. “You’re better off alone,” he mourns to a lover. “Cause I’m about to fuck it up with you.”
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