It’s 10.30am in the western Sydney suburb of St Clair, the sky low and white and muggy. Grant Perez is posing with his car as the Guardian’s photographer snaps away. It’s not uncommon to see rappers and pop idols draping themselves over Lambos and Maseratis, with Calabasas palm trees waving in the background; Perez’s whip is a sticker-plastered four-door Toyota JXZ100 Mark II which he works on in his spare time, often posting videos of himself installing coilovers or lovingly washing it in the driveway of the family home.
Three weeks from now, Perez – better known online and on the charts as grentperez – will be out of the suburbs and on a 36-show North American tour for his new debut full-length album, Backflips in a Restaurant. The 24-year-old has more than 770,000 YouTube subscribers and fans all over the world, after nearly a decade of uploading videos filmed in his bedroom upstairs, singing sweet, soulful covers and his own songs. Backflips is the sleek, confidently understated culmination of that decade – of karaoke sessions with family and friends in the Filipino diaspora, learning his parents’ favourite 70s ballads on guitar, putting melancholy twists on pop hits, effortlessly effective at getting people to click and then stick around for that voice.
