The Kid LAROI Reflects on How Justin Bieber Convinced Him to Release ‘Stay’

Justin Bieber is many things. A pop icon, a heartthrob, a hitmaker. A “yes man” he is not.

The Kid LAROI recently sat for a chat with Carter Gregory for The Set List, on which he recounted working with Justin Bieber on the mega-hit “Stay.” Were it not for Bieber convincing LAROI he was sitting on a piece of platinum, “Stay” might not have reached our ears.

“That song came about because he sent me the song for his album and I was kind of like alright I gotta send him back one now from mine,” LAROI explains. “I don’t know, there was a part of me at that point in my career I think I was very in my head about like, ‘oh is this too pop of a song? Is this gonna be weird if I put this out?’ I think I was overanalyzing things, I remember asking him ‘do you want to put this on your project or something?’”

Biebs laid it out. “He was like ‘bro, are you out of your mind? You have to release this, you keep this for you,’” says LAROI. “He literally was like ‘Bro this is a smash, you gotta put this out.’”

That was some good advice. Following its release in 2021, the collaboration went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and stayed there for seven weeks), won ARIA and APRA Awards, and is one of the top 10 most-streamed songs in Spotify history, chalking up more than 3.9 billion plays on the platform (it’s currently at No. 10 on the all-time leaderboard).

Bieber is always there with good advice, even if that is to rip LAROI’s work. “He’s always dropping some really good stuff. I think though, the most helpful and useful thing is something that you wouldn’t think of, maybe off rip, but something I think he does so well is that he just listens really well. He’s really good at just being like ‘man, I’m sorry. That sucks, let’s talk about it,’” LAROI remarks. “He always has great advice but just talking about something and being acknowledged like ‘damn that sucks’ you know, that’s a thing in itself that sometimes.”

He continues, “I find it helpful when he shares his experiences with me. He just cares too which is cool, he’s never approaching it from like ‘I know everything’ which is really cool. He’s very honest about things and if he doesn’t know something he will always be like ‘I don’t know, but I’m here for you.’”

Canada and Australia have a special relationship, a human connection we see flow through with Bieber and LAROI, who also teamed up on “Unstable,” a track housed on Biebs’ sixth studio album, Justice from 2021.

LAROI (real name: Charlton Howard) is currently working his way across the United States on his A Perfect World tour, in support of his third full-length project, Before I Forget, which debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year.