Evicted in Sydney, Then on Global Charts

Charlton Howard, who performs as The Kid LAROI, was born and raised in Redfern, in Sydney's inner west, by his mother and uncle. At the age of seven he moved with his mother, his brother and his grandparents to Broken Hill, a mining town in regional New South Wales. He later spent a short time in Adelaide, where he attended Sacred Heart College, before returning to Sydney in 2017.

Back in Sydney he was on a scholarship at the Australian Performing Arts Grammar School. According to the New Zealand Herald, he and his mother were then evicted from their public housing after neighbours complained about noise and traffic. For about two years they couch surfed, staying in the homes of friends and relatives. The article does not give his exact age, though the timeline suggests he was a young teenager. In the summary of his own account, they reached a point where there was nowhere left for them to go.

He had begun rapping at 12 and caught the attention of the Sydney producer Khaled Rohaim. Partway through Year 9 he dropped out of school to pursue music. Later he moved to Los Angeles with his younger brother.

The turning point came in 2019, when an endorsement from the late rapper Juice WRLD helped him break into the international music scene.

Since then he has won two ARIA awards, five Billboard Music Awards and an iHeartRadio Music Award, and has received two Grammy nominations and three MTV VMA nominations. He is now based in the United States, and was touring Australia at the time of the article.