'I tend to go into character': The Kid Laroi on fame, grief and mental ...

It took about 30 seconds in our interview with The Kid Laroi for him to make it abundantly clear he's nothing like we expected.

"Some people have told me I look like a dickhead from my Instagram," he admitted. 

He's really not.

In stark contrast to his confident, charismatic and energetic presence on stage - and on Instagram - in reality he's a humble, anxious and very honest young man.

"I tend to go into a character a little bit, I think, when I'm on stage," the Sydney-born music megastar told us.

"I get really confident and I'm able to transform into this whole other human being. I feel like a superhero sometimes."

We soon realised we weren't sitting down with The Kid Laroi - we were meeting the 21-year-old who, to those closest to him, will always be Charlton Howard.

"I definitely think me as a person is a little more reserved," he said.

"Even just sitting down in front of a camera, I'm the most uncomfortable person ever."

It's an endearingly rare attitude for someone as famous and successful as The Kid Laroi.

For context, this is a young man who sells out concerts around the world, boasting huge hits with the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.

But his nerves couldn't have been greater as he prepared for his much-hyped performance at the NRL Grand Final.

It all made for some fascinating insight behind the scenes.

"This is definitely the craziest thing I've ever done and the most nervous I think I've ever been for anything in a really long time at least," he told us.

"I feel the extra pressure to just make everything perfect … I want everything to be perfect."

And that's where you get down to the real Kid Laroi - or Charlton Howard.

He's a young man who's very reflective - and remarkably open - about the mental health struggles of not just fame, but growing up tough before making it in the US.

He lived for a time in a Sydney housing commission, surrounded by drug use, poverty and tragedy. 

When he was just 12, his uncle was murdered, and he didn't escape grief with a more lavish lifestyle. 

His mentor, rapper Juice WRLD, died of a drug overdose before one of The Kid Laroi's childhood friends was killed train surfing.

Add to that the responsibility of providing for his family, and you can appreciate the weight on this young man's shoulders.

"There is no such thing as perfection," he said.

"Whenever I hear other people talking about how they feel and normalising their feelings and normalising vulnerability, it tends to help me a lot.

"Often everyone's feeling the same or similar things, and we're just not talking about it because we're embarrassed.

"The more we kind of normalise just having those conversations and being more open to them, it just becomes more normal and more human, right?"