To be good or to be important? “Why not both?” you ask. Oh, you sweet summer child! Anyways, here’s a disclaimer about the feature you’re reading; it’s the opposite of a puff piece. True to ourselves, we’ll field a neutral take on our main man & what he’s come to represent, both the thrills and the shortcomings, in a layered format. And yes, if you’re still processing the title, we all *do* live in a post-Baraka musical landscape, at least as far as the 256 scene is concerned.
Is Joshua Baraka the most artistically groundbreaking ninja on the scene? Dispassionately speaking, no. Is the sum of his catalog the most impressive around these parts? From an aggregated vantage point, he isn’t. But what he is, is important. “How important?” Well, he’s cast a chasm onto the landscape. There’s now a “pre-Baraka” & “post-Baraka” playbook. Speaking of the former, let’s rewind this whole thing for a bit. Y’all remember “Baby Steps” era Raka?
It’s a sentiment held by many perceptive observers & even some admittedly wide-eyed fans that those early pieces were a tad more layered material-wise than the current arc. Point being, buzz & high returns are often not directly equatable to artistic merit. In the same way, it shouldn’t even cause an argument that Raka’s single with the highest stream-count “NANA” is far from his best from a sonic viewpoint. But enough of these nerdy intricacies; we’ll frame this piece more towards the effect of his emergence than he himself.
Raka’s changed the rules in these parts. And that comes down to him, his team, a bit of happenstance & the knack to ride it all to ascendency. His rise and reliance on new media, for instance, disarmed the old guards and gatekeepers in legacy outlets around here. They would have pretended away the shame. But they’d made such bold negative predictions & pronouncements about him in the early days, that there would be no tracking back without an acknowledgement that they were wrong. Amidst it all, bro’s turned his ongoing artistic trajectory into a compelling narrative, made algorithm-informed multiregional synergies, and immersed himself in iterative brand-building in real time. And a new crop after him have taken notes!
Caution about taking notes, it serves better to use Raka as a catalyst of hope, of what can be done. And not a pedantic blueprint to be replicable in exact fashion. In fact, the question should be, is he the ceiling of possibilities among the new breed in the 256? The preoccupation should be to innovate around him, a tweak to a higher ascendency as opposed to merely attaining his gains. We have a bulk more to say about this in an upcoming feature. For now, here’s to bro from Kawempe North; mean sauce!
