Stream It or Skip It: ‘Kids Are Growing Up: A Story About A Kid Named Laroi’ on Prime Video, a scrapbook-style doc following the rapper and singer as he dips into fame (2025)

Kids Are Growing Up (now streaming on Prime Video), named for one of the most personal songs on The Kid Laroi’s debut full-length The First Time, captures the young man born Charlton Howard in a stretch of time after his initial chart and media success – in the doc, he’s already bought a big LA mansion – but before his first big arena tour, which sees him return to his Australian homeland as a conquering hero. Down there, Laroi even curated his own McDonald’s meal. (Pickles no, barbecue sauce yes.) And isn’t that a hallmark of Gen Z fame saturation? Kids Are Growing Up also explores the musician’s struggles with anxiety and suicidal thoughts, and includes a tribute to the late Juice WRLD, a friend and professional mentor for Laroi who was with the rapper when he died from a 2019 drug overdose. Also appearing here are Justin Bieber, Post Malone, and Kid Laroi’s then-girlfriend, TikTok influencer Katarina Deme.

KIDS ARE GROWING UP – A STORY ABOUT A KID NAMED LAROI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The Kid Laroi is currently just 20 years old. But Kids Are Growing Up kicks off with phone footage of Laroi back when he was just a lowercase kid, laying down blistering freestyle raps as an impossibly babyfaced 15-year-old. As raps are alternated with bold predictions for his future, Growing Up cuts to Laroi in 2022, now sporting a professional rock star ‘do and cruising to his sold-out concert at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena. “I feel like everything that’s happened, I manifested all that stuff,” he says in voiceover over footage of his performance to a throng of screaming fans. But then there’s the moment when you look around and realize that the recognition and fame you dreamed about has actually happened. “All I’m thinking about is, ‘What do I do now?’”

As the doc’s timeline jumps around, bouncing between moments from 2018 and ‘19 all the way through to his wider 2022 success and the resulting album release, Kids Are Growing Up periodically features animated setpieces wherein a cartoon Kid Laroi confronts his anxieties about life and success. The toon version of Laroi might get piled on by women and adoring fans, but he might also be consumed by a great white shark, or transform into a three-eyed trickster version of himself. It’s a colorful glimpse into his psyche. For his entire life, Laroi says, everytime he’s enjoying something and finding happiness, he talks himself out of it with darker thoughts or even suicidal ideation. And the contemporary rapper who first found success through SoundCloud and Instagram DMs references 1997, The Notorious B.I.G., Bad Boy Records, and “Mo Money Mo Problems.” “Money, fame: it doesn’t resolve problems. If anything, they just come on a bigger scale.” Some things never change, dude!

One of Laroi’s biggest professional moments was his 2021 collaboration with Justin Bieber on the number one single “Stay,” and Growing Up includes a few bro-out segments between Biebs and Laroi. His girlfriend Kat Deme is also a frequent presence, and he highlights her love and support as crucial to his emotional well-being, which becomes even more significant since their eventual breakup fueled a big part of the songwriting for his 2023 full-length. And while the doc only highlights live performances in passing, often focusing more on the field of fans’ phones raised aloft, it slows down to spend time with Laroi’s intimate rendering of “Go,” his hit single with Juice WRLD, in tribute to the rapper who meant so much to him.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Speaking of Juice, season one of HBO’s Music Box anthology series included Juice Wrld: Into the Abyss, which covers the rapper’s promise and passing in equal measure and includes interviews with The Kid Laroi. And speaking of Bieber, Kids Are Growing Up director Michael D. Ratner earned a Grammy nomination for his work on Our World, the Canadian superstar’s entertaining Covid-era documentary.

Performance Worth Watching: The animation in Kids Are Growing Up, created by Devin Flynn, is really spectacular. With their vibrant color palette and unpredictable Sid and Marty Krofft-like wackiness, it’s notable that the cartoon segments also add resonance to some of the doc’s most serious moments, as Kid Laroi grapples with anxiety and thoughts of self harm.

Memorable Dialogue: “Maybe when I was younger I thought that this was gonna make me happy,” The Kid Laroi says of the fame monster. “And I understand that this is quote unquote “What you signed up for.’ But it’s made me so much less confident in myself. It’s made me question everything I do, because you’re on a pedestal. And because you’re an artist, everyone looks at you as like ‘the voice.’ A moment can be taken in a TikTok or a Twitter or whatever, and everyone can all of a sudden have this opinion in me.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing really. The Kid Laroi is often shirtless, and like fellow Best New Artist Grammy nominee Lil Nas X does in his own recent doc, Laroi prefers to be interviewed from the comfort of his California King bed.

Our Take: These young stars – Laroi, Nas, etc. – are dealing with being the main character on social media like anyone might, but doing it as a career. And so many of them owe their very notoriety to those same socials, like the online following Nas personally cultivated that eventually fueled the rise of “Old Town Road,” or how Laroi met the majority of his early musical collaborators through promo on SoundCloud. But while it’s a big factor in their success, social media is also a mighty fickle beast. And in a win for self-awareness, Kids Are Growing Up allows plenty of time for Kid Laroi to work through these thoughts on camera. “Fame makes you feel invincible,” he says at one point in the doc. He’s got access to anything he wants – the flossy house in LA, worldwide private jet travel, and a constantly hovering support staff. But the problem is thinking that it’s all forever. “It’s a trick,” Laroi continues. “It’s a trap. What if people stop listening to my music?” For as much as the doc showcases the bling, it also centers Laroi’s perspective.

And one more note on the animation in Kids Are Growing Up. It’s no secret that Laroi and Post Malone share a similar sonic universe, where Drake-adjacent beats collide with lovelorn emo lyrics and shoutalong hooks. Like it does with Justin Bieber, Growing Up includes a segment where Post imparts to Laroi some of the wisdom he’s gained from his success in showbiz, a segment which actually offers more clarity on this than the entirety of Runaway, Post’s own recent documentary. But it’s best represented in animated form, when cartoon android versions of Laroi and Post Malone take on the big machine of the music industry, which reaches for their toil and profit maximums with its fifty arms.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Kid Laroi kind of came out of nowhere, and Kids Are Growing Up contextualizes his meteoric rise with lively animation and space lent to the rapper and singer to be himself on camera. As a performer, sure. But also as someone who thinks a lot about the potentially toxic side of fame and fortune.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.