While most parents probably do their best to keep their young children from being exposed to super vulgar rap from the likes of rappers like Lil Pump, one dad figured it’d be alright for his 11-year-old son to post his reaction videos to that sort of music on YouTube. Now, that 11-year-old has one of the most popular channels on the site under the name “PF” and counts Lil Yachty as a mutual fan.
The Daily Beast‘s Taylor Lorenz profiled exactly how Ruairi, the prodigious young music critic accumulated so many followers and fans so quickly.
In Ruairi’s react videos he sits next to his bespectacled father while blasting the latest Lil Pump, Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator, Brockhampton, or any other popular artist of his choosing.
Ruairi probes his dad about what he thinks of the album, explains nuances of the lyrics, makes jokes, occasionally rolls his eyes, and occasionally goes on hilarious tangents.
This simple setup, shot on an iPad and edited with iMovie, has amassed the junior reviewer 33,000 followers and rave reviews from other YouTube vloggers like Anthony Fantano for Ruairi’s honesty, excitable demeanor, and a surprising wealth of knowledge. Because he’s so unpretentious and straightforward, his reviews and reactions have resonated in a huge way, despite the generic presentation of his page and channel name.
The profile also details how he came about his unique style:
…one thing many viewers notice upon first viewing Ruairi’s videos are his unique outfits.
Ruairi, who wants to be a fashion designer when he grows up, said that he’s learned a ton about the fashion world from Youtube videos, specifically “hypebeast type videos where they go and spend like $2,000 at Supreme.”
While he could never imagine spending that much money at once on clothes himself, Ruairi said that discovering more about fashion and culture through Youtube has upped his aesthetic game. “I used to wear a lot of stuff from Target,” he said. “Now I’m getting more into streetwear type stuff.”
The young vlogger says he wants to design clothes and sneakers when he’s older, and he’s already tried his hand at a pair of the latter for himself:
https://twitter.com/706Liam/status/972884648576602113
Just last week, Lil Yachty retweeted a video of Ruairi, and now that video has garnered over 150,000 times retweets of its own, making Ruairi’s face recognizable all over social media. If the kids are the future, this young music critic has a bright one ahead of him. Funny enough — The New York Times themselves just instructed us to look to 11-year-olds for the future of music, maybe they were on to something.
Read the full profile at the Daily Beast here.
