By now you know that Joshua Baraka’s album Juvie dropped early on Friday. This is the artist’s debut album after a series of EPs such as Baby Steps, Growing Pains and Recess.
Juvie find Baraka on the rise, after dropping one of the biggest East African songs of the year, hitting a million listeners on Spotify and performing at Afro Nation in Portugal.
Juvie is a twelve track album, but only has ten songs, the two are interludes, one of which is the artist with friends trying to translate a message of being grateful. Of course, he also has a concert where he will definitely perform most of the songs off the new album.
But what did the twelve recordings that Baraka released on Friday morning teach us about the artist?
Here are the four takeaways
Juvie is for Juvenile
When the album title dropped about two months ago, the internet started scrapping for what the name could possibly mean. There were many who guessed that it was Etania’s third name or an ex girlfriend. And you could hardly blame Ugandans for taking the route, Baraka has famously thrown around names in songs such as Belinda, Tina, Sana, Nayomi, Nana…so Juvie wouldn’t be such a shock being someone’s name. It turns out Juvie is for Juvenile. Well Joshua thinks of himself as a Juvenile trying to walk a path that many have not dared. And this album just like Growing Pains and Recess is a dedication to the musical growth.
He’s a pastor’s son
Well, we didn’t learn about this but the album re-achoes it from the top. The first thing you will listen to on Juvie (if you are one of those yet to listen to the album) is a pastor preaching. Joshua is a son of a pastor and so is Elijah Kitaka. Often, when people born into strong Christianity becomes secular artists as people say, they almost defranchise from that part of their foundation. Yet Joshua placing that distorted prayer or summon at the beginning was the man reminding us that he’s still attached to the church, even when he’s making girls wine like he has a masters.
Joshua is equally a good producer
It’s common for local artists to call themselves artist/producer when no one has listened to their productions. Yes, we are talking about those artists; you will never find a song they produced for themselves or another artist but well they enjoy having the producer tag anyway. Not Baraka. For those who may know, he produced the first single off the Recess Ep, Lonely. On this album, he’s one of the three producers. The album was produced mainly by Jae5, Joshua Baraka and Axon.
Jea5 and Joshua are tag team
When Joshua Baraka broke onto the mainstream scene, he had most of not all his songs produced by Axon. In fact it was until Recess that we heard different producers working with him. Over that time, on songs such as Diigi, he worked with various producers until Wrong Places. That’s the time he introduced many Ugandans to Jae5. The two have since released two more collaborations which all appear on the album; Dive In, Still Young and This Time. Jae5 may not have known Baraka for long but definitely understands his craft and knows how to get the best out of him. Their collaboration This Time maybe the best of their works; tapping into Afro soul without being allover the place; Joshua sings the hook in Luganda; ..ebirungi bijya ne bigenda… In a softer tone. Like all their collaborations, it works so well.
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