The Kid LAROI won two awards back home in Australia this week, receiving the Best Artist and Best Pop Release honours at the 2021 ARIAs, both for his Justin Bieber collaboration ‘Stay’.

The Sydney-born rapper accepted both awards via video link from the US. As part of the ceremony, LAROI also shared exclusive footage of him performing the song to a packed audience at the Viper Room in Los Angeles.

Backing band in tow, it marked LAROI’s final recorded performance before announcing earlier this month that he’d be embarking on a short hiatus to “take some time away from everything” and focus on his debut album. Watch that performance below:

“How good is Australian music?” LAROI said when accepting the award for Best Artist. “I feel so blessed and overwhelmed at all the love and support.”

“It’s incredible that I’m getting this much love, especially from home. That means the world to me. Starting this, that’s all I ever wanted to do, was just bring up the culture and show the world how good Australian music was.”

It’s the second time LAROI has been honoured by his home country in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the Kamilaroi musician won Artist of the Year at the 2021 National Indigenous Music Awards.

Last week, the rapper confirmed the end of his ‘F*ck Love’ era with a music video for Mustard collaboration ‘Still Chose You’, which arrived as part of the third instalment in his mixtape trilogy earlier this year.

‘F*ck Love 3: Over You’ was released back in July, following on ‘F*ck Love’ in July 2020 and ‘F*ck Love (Savage)’ in November of that year.

“Seeing the impact of the project and hearing about how it’s helped and changed so many [people’s] lives is fuckin’ beautiful – but also incredibly surreal,” LAROI wrote on Instagram upon the release of the ‘Still Chose You’ video.

“Last week I went on a small vacation of the first time in a while. During that time I started thinking, and I made the decision that I need to take some time away from everything and focus on the next project; my debut album,” he added, signalling a short hiatus.

That time away will be fairly brief, however – his first ever world tour will kick off in late January with stops in the US, Europe, UK, Australia and New Zealand.