In June, Jonny Chopps walked onto the stage at Qudos Bank Arena before Dave’s Sydney show to an eruption of boos. He wasn’t expecting a warm welcome. In fact, he was largely unbothered by it. “People were booing, but I didn’t give a fuck," he tells 10 Magazine Australia. "Of course they’re gonna boo, they don’t know me.” For Chopps, the occasion mattered more. “It’s a place I’ve gone to for shows my whole life. That was really special for me.”

Eighteen months ago, Chopps was a normal teenager not long out of high school. Now 21, he’s a full-time electrician and the most inescapable name in Australian rap. He’s also the first Australian artist to be embraced by The Kid LAROI.

In June, he returned from a three-and-a-half-week trip to the US, where he recorded Catalyst—his second EP of the year and a fitting name for the turbulent 18 months preceding it. While overseas, he met with record labels and performed with LAROI at his concert in New York. 

It's just after 9pm on a Friday night when we sit down at Colombo Social, a Sri Lankan restaurant of Chopps' choosing in Enmore, Sydney’s inner west. It’s his first in-depth interview. Outside, the streets are littered with people bar hopping and having dinner, Uber drop offs, and people heading to town.

He’s initially shy, yet very polite even while slightly under the weather. Today, he worked a full day on the tools. "I enjoy my job. I love it, it’s good. It keeps me moving,” he says. “I like doing hands-on stuff, it gives me structure, so when I’m not working I can do what I need to do.” 

Inside Colombo Social, laughter and clinking glasses carry over the noise of the kitchen, while a steady queue forms near the entrance as Friday-night bookings pile in. “They haven’t changed the taste, it tastes the exact same,” he critiques. “A lot of these places are finer and more expensive, but the food is bland.”

Before becoming an electrician, Chopps' first job was at a Sri Lankan restaurant—Dish Dish in Glebe—a suburb in Sydney’s inner west. These days he spends more time around Oxford St, which is near his studio and current girlfriend’s house. 

Living at home, he eats Sri Lankan curries frequently for dinner, but hoppers and other side dishes are more of a rarity these days. “The pappadums are gun, the crab kottu is cracker. We’ll get goat curry and string hoppers too, I haven’t had them in a while,” says Chopps to the waiter. “And arrack, it hits pretty good…fuck it, we’ll get it double distilled.”

These days, a lot of people are talking about Jonny Chopps, and he's had to learn to put a guard up the more recognizable he’s become. It’s something he references on Slumber as something his girlfriend constantly reminds him of.  “I don’t care about hate anyway. I love the hate, it’s motivating. If I see hate comments, that means my post has got pushed out to new people. If everyone likes it, that means they already know me.”

Now when he steps on stage, it feels like a moment. But for all the attention he’s now receiving, Chopps insists little has changed about the person underneath it. “When there's a camera around, it's like the whole internet's watching me,” he explains. “When I open up to someone it’s behind closed doors, hanging out, very intimate, just us. I’m the same all the time,” he says.

When I ask him what really matters to him, Chopps' answer is simple. “Going out with my mates, being outside and just having fun, hanging out. When you get together and enjoy time, that’s when you really live your life.”

These days, alongside his girlfriend, Chopps still trusts his best mate Jack the most. “They just allow me to be open and tell the truth and really talk about how I feel. With everyone else, I’m closed up. But with them, I can tell them exactly how I feel,” he says. “Like me talking to you, this is how I speak to people normally.” Jack has been there since school, long before Chopps was comfortable letting anyone hear his music.

Born in Parramatta to Sri Lankan parents, Chopps is Western Sydney through and through. The people he doesn't need that guard around are largely those who knew him long before anyone knew ‘Jonny Chopps’. As a first-generation Sri Lankan Australian, Chopps was heavily involved in the local Sri Lankan community and grew a deep understanding of his culture through cultural art. 

At home, his family speak broken Sinhalese. Through language schools and gatherings where the local children from the community intertwined, Chopps met some of his best friends to date. “I’ve been a part of the Sri Lankan community since I was a little kid, it’s like family,” says Chopps. “Every year it was the same type of shows, we'd all get together. That's how I built a good friend group of Sri Lankan friends. They're my closest friends.” Eventually he tried jazz and tap dancing, but it didn’t feel natural. “I didn't really want to do it. I felt alone, that’s why I didn’t like it. Sri Lankan dancing was different because I had a lot of mates, guys and girls, doing it together. We were all a big group.”

As a child, he visited Sri Lanka every two years, spending most of his time in Colombo, where both his parents are from. His last trip was in 2023, when he spent time with his grandmother a year before her passing. He remembers the beautiful country as intensely tropical, its dense forests and unfamiliar wildlife a stark contrast to Sydney. “I showed her my first tat, she was in disbelief. It was so funny,” says Chopps. 

Chopps' childhood was surrounded by music. He first experimented with melodies on the piano in his home growing up, and he says playing instruments is what ignited his initial passion. As a child, performance was already second nature. "It helped, 'cause now when I go on stage I'm doing what I want, so I can just go so hard. It's not even a thing anymore. I've been on stage my whole life."

He credits his mother for harnessing his creativity, ensuring Chopps' involvement in music lessons, bands, dance programs, and sports teams—where he also played the violin, guitar, and saxophone (which was his favorite by a mile). “She was doing everything—running the show for me and all the siblings”, he explained. She’s a special-needs primary school teacher, and their relationship is a recurring theme throughout his music. It’s a side of Chopps that’s always felt intentionally soft, even when hidden between layers of vulgar provocation.

As a child, Chopps was interested in astronomy and became increasingly intrigued by the unknown. “I’d just watch space videos and stuff like that—I still watch that stuff,” he says. "cause you don't know what it is. We've never seen it. We've never been out there. It's [interesting] just finding out about the unknown." He still wants to go to space one day. “That's the craziest human experience, I reckon. I wouldn't live there, but I’d go for a holiday.”

During lunchtimes, from year 8 onwards in high school, Chopps made beats on GarageBand and later a laptop while Jack freestyled and played piano. “Jonny’s a nickname for Jonath. I have three first names, but that’s my common one. Everyone calls me Chopps, even my mum. Chopps is because I chop up beats. And I chop up buds too. I like a little smoke,” says Chopps with a grin.

Chopps always imagined himself on stage, but it wasn’t until high school that he had his first “I want to do this” moment. Throughout, Chopps began to secretly produce and write to his music behind closed doors, but was very reluctant to tell his friends—something he’s referred to throughout his music with lines like “I never dropped music in high school/I knew I’d get demotivated when they took the piss out”. 

During class, he’d sit at the back of the class with Jack watching On The Radar freestyles, and listening to Playboi Carti, Young Thug, and SL—he also revealed in an interview with r00ts blog last year that he grew up listening to a lot of Michael Jackson. His classmates introduced Chopps to Australian rap, which was far from the dominant genre across his entire friend group outside. 

Even though Jack saw something in him early, Chopps wasn’t ready. “...I knew I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t confident. At school, everyone's trying to fit in. I was too scared and didn’t want to get judged,” he explains. “I just wanted to go to school and not have any dramas, because I’m a chill guy.”

Chopps' rise has been fast, but not much has been accidental. 

Once school was behind him, he started treating music seriously, watching educational YouTube videos around music marketing and soaking up as much information as he could—devising a plan. It’s since become part of his daily routine. “I don’t watch Netflix—don’t even know what’s on it. Even when I watch YouTube while I’m eating, it's basically work too,” he says.  

Chopps made his first “full song” in 2022, entitled Sticky, which was recorded in a friend's bedroom after the pair combined funds for a mic. Then in February 2025, he released ‘Cooler’. 

Rather than waiting for something to catch, his plan was to release monthly and build enough momentum that people eventually had to pay attention. With each release, Chopps became increasingly impossible to ignore. Underneath layers of hate comments, the music began to resonate in the streets with tapped-in Australian hip-hop fans. However, ‘Slumber’ was when the conversation started to change. 

“That’s when people noticed, like, there’s a lot of potential here,” says Chopps. “I wasn’t really thinking too much about it, I just did it and went with the flow.” On the track, Chopps raps about being in a rut. “Cooler’ is a happy one, but I wasn’t feeling happy at the time. I had beat block and writer’s block,” he says. 

“That’s why on ‘Slumber’ I say I was in a rut because I couldn’t write anything. I felt pressured. I didn’t know what to do.” The track is rooted in heartbreak, where Chopps reflects on his necessary sacrifices for success and reveals his Mother as a primary motivator.

"Now I'm a lot more busy, but that's the reason why I do it. It's for my mum and my family—just to have a lot more financial freedom and live a more relaxed life. I don't want to see Mum stressed. It's been way too stressful. It's still stressful, so I have to make it out and see her just chill, just relax, you know?"

In July 2025, ‘Cognac For Christmas’ changed everything. It was the song that caught The Kid LAROI’s attention, while Chopps gave listeners one of their clearest glimpses behind the curtain. That October, UK underground pioneer YT brought him out at the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney to a huge reception. Chopps then released ‘No Favours’, and shortly after joined his current management team, Paving Pavement (PVP). PVP is made up of Max, Jacob, Temka, and Logan, four friends whose roles stretch well beyond conventional music management. They run tours and events while holding down day jobs, and collectively buying into Chopps' vision.

For Chopps, who had built much of his early career alone and was protective of both his ideas and the people around him, allowing a team this close took some adjustment, and he admits creative input would initially frustrate him. 

Gradually, though, he realised trusting other people didn't mean surrendering ownership, and it's since been one of the biggest adjustments of his career. Chopps admits he hated group projects at school because he wanted to do things his own way, but now he considers learning to work with others his biggest lesson so far.

“We aligned aesthetically. We all listen to the same music. I liked how they worked,” says Chopps. “They were already working for me and helping me out without anything in return. Why would I not work with these people, man?”

On the jobsite, his workmates know that he’s an artist and have followed the journey since the beginning.

“When people comment "get a job", trust me, I'm working more than you, bro. Don't worry, I don't sleep,” he says with a chuckle. “They're probably thinking I do nothing all day and have the time to make music…that's funny. It's validating. I'm trying to find more time, I literally don't have enough hours in the day.”

As both his lives have begun competing, Chopps has become more deliberate about balance. “If work is overlapping and I don’t have any time for music, I’ll make those adjustments because you’ve got to have a balance,” he says. “I have priorities. There’s things that I need to do to support myself, and then there's the things that I want to do.” That recalibration hasn't only applied to his work schedule. For the past year and a half, Chopps has been seeing a therapist, something he describes as “life-changing.” 

“I used to have anger issues. I’d always be irrational, I’d just blow up and be so mad all the time and it was ruining things,” he reveals openly. 

In mid-November, The Kid LAROI shared ‘Cognac For Christmas’ to his Instagram story. Days later, Ninajirachi shouted Chopps out on the ARIA red carpet, and suddenly the conversation around Chopps had changed again. “It’s exciting, everything is so exciting and it’s so fast-paced. I like fast-paced shit anyway. Just not knowing what’s gonna happen, doing it, and going with the flow. That’s how it’s always been,” says Chopps.

In May, he headed to America for a spontaneous three and a half weeks. While there, he performed at showcases in New York, took label meetings, and performed ‘Cognac For Christmas’ at LAROI’s concert in Brooklyn. Outside of a smaller show in New Zealand with 9lives, it was the first time Chopps had performed outside of Australia. 

Afterward, LAROI hired out an Aussie-owned bar downtown where they hung out for the night. “I was in New York and he was like, “oh just come, I'll invite you to watch the show,” and then a few days before he was like, “yo, do you want to perform?” I was like, “fuck, of course.” That was the first proper show I did in America and people knew the lyrics. I was like, damn, this is real."

Throughout LAROI’s rise, he’s faced criticism at home for not embracing emerging artists in the Australian scene.“For a long time, everyone was like “LAROI made it and forgot about us. He’s not putting anyone on,” says Chopps. 

“Before I was dropping, I was looking at the scene and nobody was standing out. People are good, but nobody’s got the star potential. If I was LAROI, I wouldn’t cosign anyone. Literally. I’m not trying to be cocky, but who the fuck would you cosign? Like deadset.”

Chopps' still unsure who showed LAROI his music. “Someone put him onto me, I had no idea. LAROI is from the same area as my producer Braz!, so they have hella mutuals,” he says. “I think it was his mate's girlfriend’s sister. It just went down the line. That’s how it happened.”

The second he touched down in New York, Chopps was straight into work mode. With limited time, there was none to spare. “I didn’t have time to hesitate. I have to just record. It really pushed me, and I’m way more skilled now.”

During that time, he recorded the entirety of Catalyst, working with international producers including Glasear (Thaiboi Digital, Bladee, Playboi Carti, Drake) and Reklus1ve (Nettspend, fakemink, xaviersobased), alongside close collaborators Braz! and riplunar, whose production has become a recurring fixture across Chopps' catalogue.

That pressure followed him into Catalyst. On the outro ‘Motorola’, Chopps faces maintaining the moment he’s created. “...I created a moment, I gotta keep going, I’m a walking token/I make the accent sound good, I don’t sound bogan…”

Without any indication of a new tape, Chopps announced Catalyst in late July with the release of ‘Element’s alongside an On The Radar performance. Years after Chopps and Jack spent classes watching On The Radar freestyles from the back of the room, Jack watched Chopps' own performance from home.

“When we sat down and watched him perform on the big screen at my house, it was surreal,” says Jack. He’s remained quietly in the background throughout Chopps' story, first appearing in Chopps' first video for ‘Cooler’ and later being mentioned on ‘Flip Out’. 

‘Element’ was Catalyst’s first single and one of its standouts.It was the first track recorded for the project as he experimented with new vocal tones and a refined image. It also tested the creative trust he'd begun developing with PVP. “What you hear is what happened. It’s brand new. I was stepping out of my comfort zone on all these beats, it’s just complete evolution,” says Chopps, who now feels vindicated in his identity and direction.

“How are you supposed to elevate if you’re doing the same thing? You’ve gotta do something different,” he exclaims. “Being different isn’t easy. It’s scary. And sometimes overwhelming.” The result surprised him. “I’m so happy with it. Everything else I've done, I knew I could do it. Honestly it's the first thing I've done musically where I’ve actually impressed myself.” 

While he was initially mistaken for British, America embraced Chopps. “It was validating, but I was scared. I felt like an alien, especially going up to famous people and trying to connect, it felt like going up to a girl for the first time. I expected them to be stuck up like Sydney,” he says.

The trip tightened the group around him, too. ”We had to trust each other. We didn’t know anyone, and had to make people remember us. We were gonna make a statement.”

Chopps took listeners on the ride in between Free Will and Catalyst with him; on ‘Downtown Orlando’ references meeting LAROI and missing home. “...my music is fun to listen to. But people don't realise I'm actually spitting. It’s not just a vibe,” he says.

On the ‘Billie Jean (Remix)’, Chopps pokes fun at former federal opposition leader Peter Dutton. “...I love that bar, man,” laughs Chopps. “That bar went over people's heads. I need to say that one again, not many people picked it up.

He’s unusually self-aware for someone whose life has changed this quickly, and he considers it one of his greatest strengths. “I think that’s a gift, honestly,” he says. “That’s probably my main gift.”

He traces that awareness back to his mum. “Whenever we'd go somewhere, whatever we did, my mum would always talk about what was going on in the world.” It also explains why his music has connected with young Australians.

For all Chopps' insistence that the person hasn't changed, he's increasingly conscious of how that person is presented. The music, visuals, outfits, and moments surrounding each release aren't treated as separate from the work—Chopps and PVP’s alignment on the ethos that everything matters has been key.

Rather than treating ‘Aussieness’ as its own sonic lane, Chopps' experimenting with global flavours, and has forced a question around what Australian rap is allowed to sound like.

”They’ve never seen it before, that’s all. It’s brand new. It’s something new that’s unpredictable and out of their comfort zone. So they don’t trust it,” he says. “There’s probably heaps of types of rap in the UK and America that only they know. Grime’s big, but it’s very UK. You’re not going to see Lil Baby on a grime beat. That’s their thing.

“...[the new generation of Aussie rap] is more modernised and tapped into the rest of the world, so it’s like a fusion. It’s not just Aussie rap. There’s Australians that don’t even get it, and they’re Aussie!” adds Chopps. 

Chopps now has a far deeper understanding of both his personal and artistic identity. On Catalyst, that certainty is clear. “That's what Jonny Chopps is. The vocals, the lyrics, the story, the way I come on the beat. The accent, obviously. Everything I talk about, it's very personal. It's what I do. It's not what anyone else does.”

Since the trip, LAROI has remained in Chopps' corner as his music develops, even offering feedback on Catalyst. ‘It’s the golden cosign,’ says Chopps. ‘...it’s good to have a bit of guidance when I want it from someone like that, who’s been there and done it.

This Friday, September 4th, Chopps' embarks on his first headline tour, beginning in Melbourne before dates in Brisbane and Sydney, followed by pop-up shows in Paris, London, and more TBA. 

A year after YT brought him out at Sydney's Oxford Art Factory, he’s now closing in on a sell-out of the room himself, and there’s already more taking shape beyond Catalyst, including collaborations with Ninajirachi, 9lives, and daine in the works.

For all his individual ambition, Chopps doesn't want his success to exist in isolation. “I want to bring people up with me…Fokelore, Scan, Twiggie, Jani Cruz. Tishyst, he’s insane. And August Lawrence, that’s my boy. We’re all the same age, same generation. It’s cool. Nobody’s alone.

My whole thing is I want people to follow after me,” he says. "I want to be the one that did it, the one that put on for Australia. The one that really pioneered and paved the way. You only have a very select few. There needs to be more of us.”

Part of his ambition comes from what spending time in America made obvious to him; Australia lacks enough examples of what music can lead to. “If it’s just me that does it, it’s not Aussie rap, it’s just me. I want to put Australian rap on the map.”

After the upcoming overseas dates, Chopps plans to leave full-time electrical work behind, picking up something part-time that lets him switch off. As the two sides of his life begin to converge, Chopps is determined to see it through without losing himself in the process. 

But there are parts of himself he hopes success won’t change. “I don’t ever want to kill the  spark inside of me. I’ve always been a happy, jolly person, and I’m always motivated to do things. I don’t want that to ever change.”

With a move to the States looking increasingly likely next year, Chopps is committed to the idea, even as the thought of leaving family and friends weighs on him. “I’m keen. But I’m also nervous,” he says. “...a bit sad too, because I don’t want to leave home. But I kind of have to.” 

When we meet, Chopps is hoping his next flight overseas in September can leave a day later so he doesn't miss a party with his friends. “Nothing will top just hanging out with my people at their house.”  When the success he’s chasing eventually arrives, Chopps will miss the normality of hanging out with his friends after work on a Friday night, and smoking at Rouse Hill Lake. 

“I want to be remembered as someone who made great music, was a great person, and made people feel good—made people feel amazing. If my music can create a good memory, that’s it. Because that’s what music has done for me. It creates memories.”

Listen to Jonny Chopps HERE.

Top image by Griffin Ellis.

@jonnychopps