From Losing Virginity At 12 in the School Toilet, Struggling With Weed, Having an Alcoholic Dad, A Weed Peddling Mum And Starting Out In Music, Here Is The Dark Side Of Juliani You Did Not Know

Juliani’s rise from the Dandora backwaters to the pinnacle of Hip Hop scene in Kenya is well documented but usually with little in depth details.

He has previously been reluctant to be open but now ahead of his concert celebrating his first album, he has been divulging details bit by bit. Now he has gotten a bit more personal. In his latest three articles on the Medium platform, Juliani has revealed what his child hood was like, his relationship with the parents and the personal challenges he had to go through.

He reveals he smoked weed mostly when writing music taking it more as a spiritual exercise and how it mostly came due to the fact of growing up next to Kitu Sewer and the Mau Mau pioneering legends like K-Shaka. He was close to his mum helping her run the chapatti and beans restaurant.

His father he says “Dad never gets home early. He always shows up late, drunk. Shouting to let the whole neighborhood know he is back. Even the dogs stop barking. Or maybe his singing drowns the barking.”

While his father and himself were consumers of the weed, his mother was more of a peddler, supplementing her income from selling mboga with the high earning green of the weed. As Juliani himself puts it “Back in Mathare, before we moved to Dandora, my mum sold weed to survive. She was known as Mama Mboga. She had the sukuma wiki and nyanya on display, yeah, but the real mboga wasn’t. And it earned her more money.”

His father would later be saved making a sudden decision and burning the entire weed and cigarettes in the house in front of the kids. On his sexual life, his experiences mirror those of many kids in a place where sexual education is scanty and adult supervision and guidance hardly present. As he writes

“My experience happened in the school toilet. Every Friday in our school was overall cleaning day. Whereby classes took turns in washing the entire school. This particular Friday was our turn. The teacher were always not around, the activities were supervised by headboys and school prefects.

I was tense but I had to do what I had to do after all few of my friend knew what I was up to. The girl of my choice was tall, light skinned and we always make eye contact in class. I occasionally threw chewed paper at her; This wasn’t paper mache, we called it paper mate! Strange childish way of declaring love!

The date was set. The girls washroom of course were separate from the boys but after a certain hour of time the rules don’t apply.

I didn’t know what it means, how to do it. I just had to. My “partner in crime” was aware and we made a decision; how and when it’s gonna go down.

And it went down! the clothes and indeed the deed.”

All these was part of his growing up and he says it shaped him, his music career was equally dramatic, from hustling for fare to get to competitions from the likes hosted by Budha Blaze, his experience in being part of Kilio Cha Haki album and so much more.