For most musicians, the media circuit is part of the job description. The TV couch appearances, the radio freestyles, the magazine profiles, they come with the territory. But Ugandan singer Sqoop Larma has quietly built a career doing things his own way, keeping the cameras at arm’s length and letting his music do the talking. Now, in a rare moment of openness, he has explained exactly why.
Speaking on Allan Cruz’s YouTube podcast, Sqoop Larma addressed something his fans and industry observers have noticed for a while: the singer simply does not show up where you would expect a rising music act to show up. According to a report on the interview, the artist confirmed that he has stayed away from some of Uganda’s most popular music television platforms, including NBS After 5 and NTV The Beat, not out of fear or controversy, but because he finds the whole interview experience deeply unappealing.
“I Don’t Like Doing Interviews”, Full Stop
There is something refreshing about an artist who skips the PR-polished answer and just tells you the truth. Sqoop Larma did exactly that. He told Cruz that his limited media presence is not a calculated strategy to build mystique, nor is it anxiety about saying something he should not. It is simpler than that. He does not think he has enough personal stories worth sharing, and he does not enjoy the format.
“I don’t like doing interviews and not just TV, but altogether. I don’t normally do them, that’s why they are few. I’m not scared of saying unnecessary things,” he said, stripping the whole conversation down to its plainest truth. No drama, no spin. Just a man who knows what he wants and, more importantly, what he does not.
That kind of self-awareness is rarer in the music industry than you might think. Many artists perform privacy while secretly craving the lens. Sqoop Larma appears to be the genuine article, someone who genuinely considers himself a private person without the archive of anecdotes and behind-the-scenes moments that fuel the typical celebrity interview.
What His Absence Actually Tells Us About Ugandan Music Culture
Uganda’s music television ecosystem is built on visibility. Shows like NBS After 5 and NTV The Beat function as tastemaker platforms, spaces where artists get to perform, banter with hosts, and connect with audiences who might not encounter their work through streaming or radio alone. Skipping those spaces is not a neutral choice, it carries professional weight.
Yet Sqoop Larma’s absence from those platforms has not buried him. That alone says something interesting about how the music landscape is shifting. Younger audiences increasingly discover artists through social media clips, YouTube content, and word of mouth rather than traditional television slots. An artist who creates compelling music does not necessarily need to be everywhere at once to find an audience that will listen.
There is also a cultural conversation worth having here. In a media environment where oversharing has become normalized, where artists are expected to document their relationships, their studio sessions, their morning routines, choosing to withhold is almost an act of resistance. Sqoop Larma is not hiding. He is simply not performing a version of himself that does not exist.
The Quiet Ones Often Have the Most to Say Through Their Work
History is generous with examples of artists who kept their private lives locked and let the work carry all the weight. The less they explained, the more space listeners had to project meaning, emotion, and personal connection onto the music. That relationship between artist and audience, mediated only by sound and not by personality, can be incredibly powerful.
Sqoop Larma may or may not be thinking in those terms. He strikes you as someone who is not overthinking it at all, he just knows what feels right for him. But the effect is similar. When an artist is not constantly feeding the media machine with personal content, every rare appearance carries more weight. This podcast moment with Allan Cruz will likely be dissected by fans simply because it is one of so few windows into who Sqoop Larma actually is beyond the music.
Why This Kind of Honesty Resonates
Audiences are increasingly good at detecting when an artist is performing authenticity versus actually living it. The overly curated social media presence, the interview where every answer sounds rehearsed, the carefully managed public persona, listeners notice. And often, they respect the alternative far more.
Sqoop Larma walking into a podcast and saying, plainly, that he does not like interviews and does not have many stories to tell is the kind of honesty that builds real loyalty. It is not glamorous. It will not trend for a week. But it lands as genuine, and genuine is hard to manufacture.
For fans who have followed his music without knowing much about the man making it, this interview offers a small but telling portrait. He is not mysterious by design. He is just private by nature, comfortable with his own company and his art, and not particularly interested in filling silence with noise for the sake of visibility.
Whether that approach serves his career in the long run remains to be seen. But in an industry that rewards volume and visibility above almost everything else, there is something quietly bold about choosing to simply make the music and step back. The songs will speak. He will not have to.
So here is the question worth sitting with: in a world that demands artists constantly perform their lives for public consumption, is Sqoop Larma’s privacy a liability or actually his most distinctive quality?
