In November 2022, the anonymous troublemakers at crossword-solver.io, a puzzle-solving forum with occasional slings into the existential, attempted to calculate the “saddest” and “happiest” popular musicians. By categorizing lyrics across the “eight basic emotions”—anger, fear, anticipation, trust, surprise, sadness, joy, and disgust—the team derived a sadness quotient for each of the 120 most streamed artists on Spotify. Although the algorithm itself was necessarily mysterious, Australian rap-turned-pop prodigy The Kid LAROI came in third. At 17.0% sad, he was narrowly out-gloomed by singer- songwriter Ava Max (17.3%) and pop superstar Billie Eilish (18.1%).

The next year, the rapper released THE FIRST TIME, his aptly named debut studio album, which provided little in the way of dreamy counterweight to his 2018 EP 14 WITH A DREAM, his 2020 mixtape F*CK LOVE, or the mixtape’s follow-ups: F*CK LOVE (SAVAGE), F*CK LOVE 3: OVER YOU, and F*CK LOVE 3+: OVER YOU. (An EP is to an album as a novella is to a novel—shorter. A mixtape is to an album as a manifesto is to a novel—scrappier, and free.)

In addition to a few mid-chart radio hits like “NIGHTS LIKE THIS” (“Hold my hand until we turn to ashes / Love me ‘til they put me in my casket”) and “BLEED,” THE FIRST TIME featured three monologue-based interludes. These tracks discuss heartbreak, fate, and, most of all, grief, a feeling with which the artist has been intimately acquainted from a young age.

Yet, sitting down for our interview wearing a smile and a blindingly bright orange hoodie, The Kid LAROI is not exactly the sacrificial lamb he once was, baring his trauma for all the world to see. The “GIRLS (“Girls just want to dance / Girls just want to have fun”), “APEROL SPRITZ” (“I drink Henn’, she drinks Aperol Spritz / Girl, I promise you ain’t had it like this”) and “SLOW IT DOWN” (“I met you on Monday / Fucked you on Tuesday / Wednesday, tellin’ all your friends I’m your new bae / Thursday, same thing we did on Tuesday) singer prescribes a refreshing dose of joie-de-vivre. “I don’t know why the ‘sad thing’ comes a little too easy to me,” the rapper reflects, in between short laughs and long sips from his dark purple Erewhon drink. “It was actually getting a little boring. I was just like, ‘Fuck...I’m sick of feeling this way…and I’m kind of sick of these songs.’”

The Kid LAROI, born Charlton Howard, takes his stage name from his Kamilaroi ancestry, an aboriginal peoples native to his home state, New South Wales. Though he was born into a middle class family—his father even had a short-lived pop career in the UK—LAROI’s childhood grew increasingly strained after his parents separated. As LAROI, his younger brother Austin, and his mother Sloane jumped around the outskirts of Sydney, LAROI’s uncle Wayne served as a father figure. In 2015, when LAROI was 12, Wayne was murdered. After the incident, the family moved into public housing, though they were eventually evicted due to noise complaints. Around the same time, LAROI got serious about his music. His uncle had always encouraged him to pursue his passion.

In 2019, record executive Lil Bibby, who also discovered Juice WRLD, caught wind of 14 WITH A DREAM and signed LAROI to his label, Grade A Productions (the two are no longer affiliated). LAROI and Juice formed a close mentorship; he was with Juice when he overdosed later that year. Mere months later, LAROI’s childhood friend passed away in a train surfing accident.

These experiences, complemented by the knowledge that his father went from a recording artist to gas station attendant in only a few years, have made LAROI a particularly anxious superstar with a particularly raw sense of mortal balance. The title THE FIRST TIME is not just a promise of more music to come, but also an acknowledgement—an acceptance?—of the inevitable pain on the horizon of any young person’s life.

If you’re a perfectionist like LAROI—that is, if you’re 21 and from what people have coined the “slums” of Sydney, if you’ve been supporting your immediate family since you were 16, if you moved them with you to the closest coast of the fifth furthest continent—each morning starts with a review and, potentially, a remix of the prior day’s work. One scene from Kids Are Growing Up, Michael D. Ratner’s 2024 documentary on LAROI, features the rapper obsessively re-recording the line, “I spent two thousand in this room just to sleep alone.” “Go again,” he says after each take, as if it were its own lyric. In a talking head with Blake Slatkin, the songwriter and producer laughs, “After a LAROI session, all I can hear when I’m going to bed is ‘Go again. Go again. Go again.’”

Thus, LAROI’s quality of life directly correlates to the content of music. “I will say,” LAROI admits, angling his head back and forth, “It does make my mornings a lot better when I want to go and listen to one of the mixes and it’s a happy song. It makes my morning feel a little better.”

When LAROI says, “Right now, I feel super happy,” or, “I feel like I want to have more fun,” or, “I’m trying to do something different for a change,” in his shifting, Chicago-meets-Aussie accent, dark bushy eyebrows just about to jump off his forehead, you get the sense that, even if he wanted to posture some faux personal peace, he really doesn’t have the stomach for insincerity. And even though the sober honesty of his early work was what made him the Grammy-nominated boy wonder we know and love, he’s wise enough not to treat catharsis as a more noble endeavor than danceability.

“It all comes from a real place, either way, right?” LAROI asks, awash with Angeleno equanimity. “It might be a broader song, but the emotion comes from a real place—feeling happy, wanting to go out and have fun.”

This mysteriously un-obfuscating new era is ushered in with upcoming single, “HOW DOES IT FEEL?” a track that’s all danceable, strutable groove. With a borderline twangy guitar line and the barest of boots-and-cats drum beats, the song would be just as fitting at a beachside kickback as it would making dinner at home (chicken piccata is his new specialty, LAROI mentions, at his girlfriend and pop star Tate McRae’s request).

“I was listening to a lot of random early 2000s stuff, a lot of [The] Neptunes, a lot of old R&B stuff, too,” LAROI says, referencing Pharrell’s early production group. “Kind of happy, but it still has that emotion to it, you know? It’s not, like, frolicking through a bunch of flowers.”

These references, LAROI explains, yielded “a little bit more direction of what a happy song might sound like.” (The happy/sad binary remains an accepted condition of the conversation). “I’ve just always correlated happy music with being kind of cheesy for some reason,” LAROI considers, leaning back in his chair. “The easy thing about making sad music is… It’s so much easier to tap into an emotion when a sad chord is played…When happy chords are played, it’s just harder for me to find melodies on top.” He pauses. “How do you know if what you’re singing is bullshit?”

LAROI, perhaps luckily, sees himself as a prime representative of his own audience—young people (“I’m, like, 21, and I go outside,” he clarifies). His casual, curated but not ostentatiously curated Instagram profile exemplifies this relatability. His carousel picks—LAROI in a cowboy hat and swim trunks, almost empty, electric blue freeze pop in hand; LAROI in the pool, camo hat and AirPods Max headphones on; Anthony Bourdain at a bistro table— would likely blend in on the social media account of any 20-something-year-old guy with a carabiner on his belt loop.

The imagery for this era, distant from the anime style cover art or bleach-blonde acidity of his earlier career, signifies the emergence of a new man. “There is a point when you feel kind of comforted by the sadness,” LAROI reflects, paraphrasing, perhaps unintentionally, a lyric from Kurt Cobain, one of his major inspirations. “And then you just get to a point where you’re like, ‘Right, this fucking sucks. I need to go do something about this.’” 

Yet, as much as Anthony Bourdain or Kurt Cobain may provide lyrical and atmospheric inspiration, they each left behind little wisdom in the way of long-term happiness. Entering the industry so young, and under such trying circumstances, it’s miraculous that LAROI has been able to maintain a sense of personal conviction and artistic aspiration at all.

“It’s been really tough, honestly, because I kind of think everything I do sucks,” he says, recalling times he has had to advocate for himself among older, more established figures in music. “At least I did. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my opinion… You’d kind of instinctually, for whatever reason, be like, ‘Oh, this person knows more than I do.’”

There’s something bittersweet about this second-person address—as if LAROI is speaking to his younger self, way back when. “It’s sometimes really hard when you feel like you’re being looked at all the time, when people are trying to break down everything, you know? It’s hard to be a normal person,” LAROI admits. But, if visualization is the key to manifestation, he is not pressed for ideas when it comes to picturing the future.

“Maybe I’d like to own a very big property. Maybe a farm or something,” he says, considering the life he’d like to live in his old age. “I definitely would love to have a huge family by that time and…Yeah.” He pauses. “This is something that I’m seeing. Boat, South of France, living the dream.”

Photographed by Chessa Subbiondo

Styled by Christopher Campbell

Written by Sarina Benezra Bell

Grooming: Johnny Stuntz at Uncommon Artists

Flaunt Film: Yong Kim

On-site Producer: Gorge Villapondo

Style Assistants: Casey McClellan, Lucca Ginsberg, Hannah Loewen

Location: W Hollywood