In the video for his latest single, Thousand Miles, The Kid Laroi does battle with himself. As if both Tom and Jerry, in a series of slapstick sketches the 18-year-old Kamilaroi rapper (real name Charlton Howard) flattens himself with a bulldozer, ties himself to a runaway car, and electrocutes himself with a metallic doorknob, his mop of blond hair zapping into a comically oversized bouffant.
With dialled-up visuals and gargantuan production values befitting an artist who has dominated charts both in Australia and the US – he is the first Indigenous Australian to top Billboard’s Hot 100 – it’s a hammy literalisation of Thousand Miles’ lyrics, lamenting his tendency to self-sabotage. “You’re better off alone,” he mourns to a lover. “Cause I’m about to fuck it up with you.”
