In January 2021 the song was re-released on Elektra and has since gone viral with 380 million streams on Spotify, 165 million YouTube views, and a Top 5 presence in dozens of countries.
‘Astronaut in the Ocean’ by Sydney rapper Masked Wolf was released in June 2019 on Teamwrk Records, got traction on TikTok, became a sleeper hit, and reached 32 million streams on Spotify by the end of 2020. Hot on the heels of The Kid Laroi, there’s another Australian hip-hop success story with global impact. The international success in 2020 of The Kid Laroi (featured in Audio Technology Issue 70) was seen as a global breakthrough that finally put the genre on the world map. Until recently, Australian hip-hop was an underground movement that barely registered outside of the country.
