Joshua Baraka opens up about youth and change on ‘Still Young’

‘Still Young’ – Joshua Baraka uses this track to pause the noise around him and talk plainly about the point he’s standing at in life. It’s the third release from his upcoming debut album ‘Juvie’, and it feels like a deliberate marker in the timeline of an artist who has grown faster than most twenty four year olds ever have to.

The collaboration with JAE5 gives the song its frame. JAE5’s production has that familiar precision he gives to artists he genuinely believes in. Clean percussion opens the floor. Subtle guitar threads run beneath the vocal. Synths sit just high enough to hold everything together without forcing a particular mood or narrative. The foundation is warm, heavy, and carefully built, but it never overshadows Joshua. It simply gives him the room to talk directly to us. 

And Joshua uses that room well. Lyrically, ‘Still Young’ is a collection of moments he’s lived through without trying to embellish any of it. School not working out. Nights that pulled him in too deep. The early taste of success that felt unreal and yet inevitable. The quiet dips that came straight after. He sings it like someone who understands the value of naming exactly what shaped him. Not to provoke sympathy. Not to polish the story. Just to be accurate.

You hear Kampala in the background of all of it. The long walks to music school. The bars he played at seventeen. The pressure of trying to stand out in a place where talent is abundant but opportunity is scarce. Those details explain the poise he carries now. He didn’t learn stage presence from a workshop. He learned it from reading rooms where nobody cared about your potential unless you made them. That training shows in his tone, in his pacing, and in the way he handles a chorus without overworking it.

‘Still Young’ reflects that balance. It’s not sentimental. It’s not reckless. It’s a clear look at the version of yourself that is still forming, still adjusting, still learning what adulthood actually demands outside of the captions. He calls it a victory song wrapped in self reflection, and that might be the most accurate way to describe it. There’s lightness, but it’s not naive. There’s pride, but it’s earned.

The timing of this release matters. Joshua has moved from Kampala neighbourhoods to European stages at a pace that would overwhelm most new artists. Uganda’s most-streamed musician. A viral breakout. Twenty thousand people are waiting for him in Nairobi. Sold-out shows across Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Manchester, and London. He’s living a reality that once felt unreachable, but he doesn’t perform like someone intoxicated by it. He performs like someone aware of the weight that comes with it.

‘Juvie’, out 28 November, is shaping up to be the body of work that contextualises that weight. Twelve tracks crafted with JAE5, plus writing contributions from The Compozers, AXON and Bien. This is a young artist trying to capture the stages of becoming himself while the world watches in real time. If ‘Still Young’ is anything to go by, the album will be honest in a way that stands up years from now, not just in the moment.

What makes the song land is its clarity. Joshua doesn’t try to mask mistakes behind metaphor. He doesn’t turn youth into a performance. He treats it as a phase with lessons he’s already absorbing. ‘Still Young’ holds snapshots of those quick, fleeting years when everything feels possible and uncertain at the same time. It resonates because the writing stays close to reality. 

This single feels like the right entry point for what comes next. A young artist, grounded by the place he came from, supported by a producer who understands the assignment, and stepping into the next chapter with intention.