‘This One’s Super Personal’ – Billboard

Aged just 20, the Gadigal-born artist with Kamilaroi roots has had more highs — and lows — than many of us experience in a lifetime.

Raised in inner-city Sydney, now based in Los Angeles, LAROI (real name Charlton Howard) has led the singles and albums charts in the United States and Australia, logged a record-setting stay at the top tier of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Stay,” his collaboration with Justin Bieber, and accumulated a towering collection of awards.

Among them, ARIA Awards, APRA Music Awards, NIMAs, and, in 2022, the singer and rapper landed a brace of Grammy Award nominations, for best new artist and album of the year.

Those painful experience he writes of include the death of his good friend and collaborator Juice WRLD. During his teens, LAROI endured the trauma of watching Juice die after suffering a seizure at Midway Airport in Chicago, a moment the Aussie recounted for Tommy Oliver’s documentary Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss.

“I don’t wanna ramble too much about it,” LAROI continues in his post announcing “Heaven,” because “it’s better if you just listen lmao but I wanna remind you that it’s never too late to be who you want to be and whatever you may be going through or feeling won’t last forever.. trust me!

The new single arrives some two-and-a-half months after the release of The First Time, his debut studio album, which bowed at No. 3 in his homeland, and cracked the top 40 in the U.S. and U.K.

“Heaven” appears on the deluxe release of The First Time, and was first teased almost a year ago. On it, he sings: “‘Cause I was reckless, drinking every night/ And gettin’ high, nothin’ there behind my eyes/ I was numb inside, and I can’t believe that I even stayed alive ’til you walked up in my life.”

The Kid has several records under his belt. As his mixtape F–k Love (Savage) hit No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart in 2021, LAROI made history as the youngest Australian solo artist to rule the national survey — at 17 years, 5 months and 22 days.

More prizes await. When he tours Australia this October in support of The First Time, LAROI will play stadiums, a feat that will see him join the likes of homegrown stars AC/DC, Sia and Rüfüs Du Sol.