In a rare interview with NME back in 2020, The Kid LAROI (real name Charlton Howard) declared his ambition to be “the Drake of Australia”. A new documentary on Prime Video chronicles how LAROI made that happen over the course of four years while revealing the personal struggles the Kamilaroi rapper/singer, now 20, went through.
Early in Kids Are Growing Up, LAROI suggests that the best way to know him is to listen to his music – and, in fact, the documentary is a companion to last year’s long-anticipated debut album, ‘The First Time’, which closes with the resonant ‘Kids Are Growing Up’. The First Nations superstar mostly writes about emotions rather than exploring his identity. Departing from his broody lyrics, the film, though impressionistic, captures LAROI’s innate charm and humour in interactions with peers and fans alike.
Kids Are Growing Up begins with footage of LAROI as a child prodigy freestyling from a car, only to fumble midway, laughing that he’s “fucked up”. Authenticity is crucial in hip-hop – it’s why Eminem conceived 2002’s quasi-biopic 8 Mile – and here LAROI lets us in. The rapper opens up about dealing with the trauma of witnessing his mentor Juice WRLD’s shock passing from an accidental overdose, industry pressures, celebrity, depression and romantic upheaval, all as he comes of age.
LAROI, who was raised by single mum Sloane Howard, even introduces absent dad Nick Howard, who had a career as a failed pop idol. It illuminates LAROI’s own anxieties about fleeting fame and is a telling narrative choice given unjustified hip-hop conspiracies about LAROI being an industry plant.
Yet Kids Are Growing Up leaves out much of LAROI’s roots in, and emergence from, the Sydney inner-suburb of Waterloo. LAROI has personally pre-empted expectations of a comprehensive history, or a raw portrait à la No Jumper’s 2019 vlog, writing on Instagram that this “isn’t a documentary that’s necessarily focused on the whole come up story”.
It’s still disappointing that Kids Are Growing Up views LAROI through a narrow American lens. It’s directed by Hollywood director/producer and “content” entrepreneur Michael D. Ratner, best known for Justin Bieber: Our World. Of the talking heads, LAROI’s current American team dominate – even Post Malone gives a testimonial. Absent are longtime Australian associates like the Western Sydney trailblazer BLESSED, who produced LAROI’s ‘14 With A Dream’ EP. The media-shy LAROI is interviewed by Aussie radio “shock jock” Kyle Sandilands, but there’s no mention of how the influential blog AUD’$ first championed him.