Shirtless young men go feral to these blown-out anthems, but the teenager’s showmanship still has room to improve
Photograph: Matthew Baker/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Matthew Baker/Getty Imagesnlike his SoundCloud rap progenitors, the Kid Laroi isn’t in the business of lowercase sadness, but brutally attention-claiming capital letters: like his song titles, he loudly styles it LAROI. Since his ascent in 2019, the 18-year-old Kamilaroi rapper has collaborated with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Machine Gun Kelly and Justin Bieber, making nine-figure streams sprinting towards the billions look like light work.
At the first of two headline shows at Brixton Academy, he sweats out his setlist like a fever, tearing through two-minute tracks titled like confessions of teen rage: Not Fair, F*ck You, Goodbye and So Done from his debut mixtape, F*ck Love. He paces across the stage with a desperate, kinetic energy, his blond mane slicked with perspiration, aptly wearing a shredded God Save the Queen T-shirt with 5,000 phones glaring back at him.
Despite the unprecedented heatwave, a sea of bodies, many of them shirtless young men with silver chains against their clammy chests, proudly baring their boxer waistbands, go feral for the assembly line of blown-out 808 drums. The crowd gorge on his tweet-and-delete lyrics, throw up their arms in despair when he warbles “I’ve got love for you, but I hate me”, guzzle on his elegies to bloodless love, and get drunk on the self-pity they otherwise wouldn’t have the words to express aloud.
But when he finds these sweet spots of togetherness, the reason for his phenomenal success becomes obvious. Go, his duet with his late mentor, Juice Wrld, is a moment of genuine tenderness amid the angst. “Long live Juice!”, the crowd chants with him, in homage to their fallen antihero, filling the void of one voice by unifying thousands. “Even if no one else in the world got you,” he says.
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