The Kid Laroi

At just 18, The Kid Laroi is already on top of the world. He has made a name for himself in a short span of just three years, with some critics claiming he’s bigger than Justin Bieber with whom he collaborated on the song Stay. Since bursting onto the international music scene in 2019, the teenager has become one of Australia’s most successful artists.

Life looked very different for Laroi, whose baptized name is Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard. Laroi’s maternal great-great grandfather was a part of the Stolen Generation of children of mixed Aboriginal descent; he was taken from his Aboriginal family, placed with an unrelated white family and was told he was “Spanish” to hide his true origins and explain his darker complexion. At the age of eighteen, he discovered from his great grandfather that he was in fact of Aboriginal background. “Laroi” is his artist’s name which he took from the Kamilaroi (or Gamilaraay) people of Australia.

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