Six Years Ago Joseph Rutakangwa Decided to Stop Waiting

The version of Joseph Rutakangwa who released his first songs in 2020 and the one building an album right now are almost two different artists. Same person, same name. The distance between them is the story.

Back then, the goal was just to begin. He’d spent years wanting to make music without doing it, the way people carry a plan around for so long that carrying it becomes the whole activity. What broke the loop wasn’t some burst of inspiration. It was the pandemic, and the blunt reminder that came with it, that if you put something off long enough, “someday” quietly becomes “never.” His first songs went out that summer. Less a grand debut than a guy deciding to quit stalling.

What came after was a long stretch of exploration. “Avani,” “I Am Meant for You,” and “Please God” all came out of that period, writing and recording and learning what actually felt authentic to him. He wasn’t hunting for a signature sound so much as finding out what his already was, which is slower and less glamorous than it sounds.

The Rutakangwa working today has a clearer answer, and you can see it in how he’s handling the next release. No more stacking up singles. He’s developing a full album as one connected body of work, built so the songs talk to each other instead of sitting side by side. The subject is love in its different states: closeness and doubt, fear and wanting, the pull between staying present with someone and running when it gets hard. He’s shaping the record so the relationship at its center actually shifts as it moves, rather than treating every track as its own separate thing.

That’s the real jump. In 2020 the open question was whether he could make music at all. Six years later that’s settled, and what’s replaced it is intent. He knows the stories he wants to tell and how he wants a project to feel start to finish, and he’s willing to sit on the work until it holds together. The album’s still in progress, so there’s no title, tracklist, or release date yet.

He’s clear that this isn’t a reset. Not a debut dressed up as a comeback, not a new persona rolled out for attention. Everything since 2020 is the same line, and the deliberate phase he’s in now is what those years were building toward without him necessarily knowing it at the time.

It’s a strange thing to watch, an artist who once had to force himself to start now refusing to rush the finish. The urgency that pushed him into music in 2020 has turned into something slower and more patient. He’s betting the record is worth the time it takes to make it cohere, and that bet, more than any one song, is what defines where he is as an artist right now.

His catalog so far is on Spotify and YouTube and every major streaming platform, with more at his website.