FEATURE: Spotlight: Ren — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Joseph Flack

Ren

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AN extraordinary talent…

that I am perhaps a little late to, Ren is someone that everyone should know. One of the most hypnotising and powerful voices in Rap, here is someone who is not only connecting with people via his music. Ren is an advocate for mental health awareness. Someone who is helping and reaching people in another way. Real name Ren Gill, the Bangor-born artist was formerly a member of the Indie Hip-Hop band, Trick the Fox. Last year, Ren released Hi Ren. The video for the song went viral. Ren played Glastonbury this year, in addition to other major U.K. music festivals. He has put out several E.P.s and singles. Ren has released two albums to date: Freckled Angels (2016) and Sick Boi (2023). It is wonderful and important that someone who lives with mental health issues is using his platform to help others are raise wider awareness and conservation. I think that Sick Boi is one of the most striking, stirring, moving and emphatic albums of the year. Such a terrific vocal and lyrical talent, Ren is shining a light on Welsh Rap and Hip-Hop – perhaps not a nation we would associate with that sort of sound. One of the most essential young voices in the U.K., I wanted to spend some time with his music. I will end with a review for the exceptional Sick Boi. I will come to a couple of interview with Ren from this year. Rolling Stone UK spotlighted and featured a brave and brilliant songwriter finding light in the bleakest situations:

“Dark topics don’t always have to be ugly and there can be a lot of beauty and richness to be found in those moments,” says Ren of ‘Suic*de’, his latest track which emerged yesterday. “Sometimes by facing them fearlessly maybe we can understand them better…”

The need to understand each other and find beauty in the bleakest of situations is a thread that runs deep through the Brighton-based singer’s music. For the last few years he’s undergone treatment for auto-immune conditions including Lyme disease, after years of misdiagnoses including depression and chronic fatigue syndrome.

But after years of shying away from discussing his own condition, Ren found that daring to speak out proved to be a game-changer. In December last year, he released the stark ‘Hi Ren’, which sees him discussing his own struggles through the guise of a voice in his head. It’s struck a serious cord on YouTube, where the video – which sees him wearing a hospital gown and performing in a wheelchair – currently boasts a staggering 14 million views.

Similarly, his own updated take on The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony, which tackles the realities of modern Britain, was even endorsed by the group’s bassist Simon Tong.

You’re currently in Canada to undergo treatment for auto-immune illnesses. How’s that process been for you?

It is helping. There’s a lot of ups and downs, like the nature of auto immunity is that it’s not like you get a broken arm, you can put it in a sling and then they say this is how long it’s gonna take.

There’s never any windows of like how long it’s taken the average person to kind of get to a place where it’s more controlled. It’s been very sort of up and down.I mean, I’ve been sick for about 10 years.

So there’s a lot of trial and error because with this autoimmunity as well, it’s like trying to find a place where your body can kind of reach a level of homeostasis a bit easier.

But, we’re trying out a lot of new meds and sometimes those meds come with their own side effects. So it’s like a lot of trial and error of swapping some around until we find a good one. On the whole it’s positive, I found that my, my mind has, has started feeling clearer. My mood started feeling better. It’s all moving in a positive direction.

Have you had a chance to focus on music as well when you’re out there?

It’s impossible for me not to man, that’s basically the thing that helps me get through this. I’ve got my little set up here. I’ve got my mic set up and my monitor. I basically brought like a little home studio with me. I’m always writing and I’m always recording. It’s kind of the main thing that gives me purpose and makes me feel happy during these processes to be honest.

So music has been your guiding light through all of this?

100 percent. Because I feel like as human beings, we all want to feel purpose, right? When I was at my worst and I couldn’t do anything, I think the fact that I had some degree of success in music beforehand helped me. I felt like if I give up now I’m throwing all of this opportunity away, that could be there in the future if things turn around. Without that, I would have just been like I don’t know what I want to do when I get better.

Does it give you more drive to succeed and create music?

It’s a funny one. Because when you’re chronically ill, you will have these windows of opportunity to create and my windows are shorter than those that a normal healthy person will get. So when they come, I intensely pour myself into the creative process rather than wasting that moment.

I think it really does drive me in the sense that if all this treatment goes well, I’ll be gifted with good health and the possibility and opportunity to create whenever I want. I think that I’m gonna carry that feeling with me as well. I just don’t want to waste any time when I can create.

You’re an unsigned artist, but you’ve managed to foster an incredible sense of community. ‘Hi Ren’ came out earlier this year and it’s sitting on over 14 million YouTube views. Why do you think that is?

It’s so gratifying to know that people have struck a chord with my music. It’s a funny one because for a while, this health condition was almost something like I’d never really talk about it with my friends.

I didn’t want it to define me and, and the same with my music, like it would always find ways to leak in, but I wouldn’t speak about it so transparently.

And then one day I made a decision that, you know what, I’m just gonna write something, just put it out there. It’s funny that the second I stopped almost like hiding a part of myself was the second I started really, really connecting with people because I wanted to just make that as raw as it could be.

Particularly the monologue part at the end of that song. What I found beautiful was how many people from different experiences found a way to relate to it, whether they were coming from a place of addiction, depression, loss, or just health conditions.

It was really nice to see that so many people were brought together by this very human thread and it inspired me to up up my level of writing as well just because I thought it shows the world that a lot of people want something like this right now. They need something like this.

But there’s been misunderstandings too. CNN did a report that cited ‘Hi Ren’ as proof of TikTok content that glamourises suicide.

Yeah, they did this piece where they were showing just how easy it was for kids to come across content that wasn’t suitable for them, but they didn’t do enough diligent research and they basically used my clip as an example of a song promoting suicide when it was actually doing the opposite of that.

It was actually promoting an acceptance of your darkness so that you could live a life where suicide wasn’t a viable option. I uploaded a response, a video response to that and then so many of my fans got behind it. They flooded CNN’s comment section and CNN actually ended up retracting this thing. They put out a statement from me and we actually kind of made a dent in what I thought was quite biased reporting, which I thought was really cool.

I think it shows the power of people and I think it shows the power of independent art.

That shows the power of the fanbase behind you though…

It’s a crazy thing. But the community has just gotten so strong and that’s what I’ve noticed about YouTube, Discord, all of these things, is that there’s such a feeling of community within the fan base and they’ve spoken to me a lot about it and I think it’s because I’ve kind of adopted this like rising tide mentality where I’m just trying to uplift as much many people as I can.

There’s a grassroots level of promotion too from people who have decided to make these YouTube videos and they’re reacting to my songs. And then a lot of my subscribers will go over to them and it’s just kind of this mutually beneficial.

I haven’t shied away from talking about my views on mental health politics, anything like that. And I think within that, it created this hub of quite positive positive politics, positive mediation between people, a positive space where people can go and meet each other free of judgment. And I think that’s been a beautiful thing, man”.

I will get to that review for Sick Boi. One of the albums of this year, I do think that it is going to be shortlisted for the Mercury Prize next year. Such is its instant impact and importance. Because of his health problems, I am not sure how viable international touring will be. There is a lot of demand out there for one of the very finest and most original rappers in the country. I was interested in an interview that Ren did with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe. She chatted with an artist whose Sick Boi album is rooted in medical pain. Someone putting his pain and fight on the page. I have selected some extracts from that chat:

“REN GILL: I wake up. I take a bunch of medication. I go to the doctor's five days a week to get IVs.

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

That's Ren Gill. He has a number of chronic health problems. As the rapper Ren, he delves into the agony of his struggles on a new album called "Sick Boi."

GILL: (Rapping) I lay broken on the kitchen floor. I clawed at the laminate. Pain wandered my body - an uninvited guest. Bones of a home where the devil could rest. I cursed the gods, cursed my messiah, cursed my maker. I cursed all of creation. There I lay, feeble and thin, sick boi, sick boi, seven my sins.

RASCOE: Ren says his pain can be a gift.

GILL: It's a decision, at the end of the day. Like, I can either decide that this is the worst thing that could happen to me, and I can start pitying myself. Or I can go, OK, this has given me a perspective that most people don't have, and I can take that perspective and I can alchemize it, and I can turn that into music. I mean, after a while, you just adapt. And you're like, well, if I'm going to keep being the victim of this story, my life's not going to be a happy story. So you've got to take it, and you've got to change it into something that makes you feel like you're in control. Like, it helps you. It helps form the character that you are.

GILL: (Rapping) Pain that twists you, the heavens dismiss you. The Father, the Ghost, and the Holy Son.

RASCOE: You make many references to God in your music, and it seems like the illnesses you describe in your music aren't just medical, but maybe they're spiritual. Is that some of what you're delving into?

GILL: Yeah, I've always had quite a turbulent relationship with my idea of God. Obviously, because if you're waking up and your body's in pain every day, there's a lot of questions, do you know what I mean? So you want answers, and sometimes they're not right in front of you. So you have to create them for yourself. So I love the mythology behind a lot of different religions. I love diving into the stories 'cause I think there's a lot of powerful meanings that we can extract from them, and it helps me try and piece together whatever the hell I think that this weird thing called existence is all about, you know?

RASCOE: Is there a song on the album that you feel like exemplifies that to you?

GILL: The track called "Lost All Faith," which is actually a metaphor for losing faith in the medical industry, where you feel like you're not getting the answers or justification for something that's causing you a lot of suffering.

GILL: (Rapping) Oi (ph), I'm a charming fella. I like drinking cans of Stella. See, I'm living for the weekend, bad kebabs and salmonella. Cinderella story, rags to riches, spin it full propeller. I'm Nigella Lawson, stacking mozzarella. Only joking. I'm an introvert, alone inside my room because my insides hurt. I contemplate existence with consistence in my polo shirt then reassert my confidence with compliments I don't deserve. I calm my nerves by plotting for the day that I might leave this Earth.

RASCOE: I mean, you know, listening to your flow on this album, like, kind of calls back to earlier eras in hip-hop. I mean, I did think of battle rap. Like, I hear that you are from a small village in Wales. So how did you find your way to rap music?

GILL: (Laughter) Yes, it's a strange place to start, isn't it? I don't know. From a very early age, I just became obsessed with hip-hop and with drum and bass, as well. And obviously, growing up in a small village, there was nobody who was doing it. And I wanted to be a producer. So I'd sit at home making loads of beats and stuff? And I was like - being like, all right, mate, do you rap? And, like, nobody rapped, so I could never find anyone to do it. So I just started doing it myself. And when I first started, I was pretty terrible, I'm not going to lie. And I just - I was just persistent.

GILL: (Singing) I got what you want. I got what you need. Old-school kicks with a new school twist banging on my MP3.

RASCOE: Who were some of the people that you loved to listen to?

GILL: Back in those early days, man, it was, like, a lot of old-school stuff. Like, I really liked all, like, Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One, early Eminem stuff. I mean, one of the first albums that I bought was "2001" by Dr. Dre. And I just - there was the beats on that - particularly, I loved the beats on that. And then a lot of U.K. artists like Plan B, Dizzee Rascal, Ghetts and Skepta and stuff like that. It's just - yeah, all sorts of stuff.

RASCOE: You really seem to value, like, just telling stories, narratives.

GILL: (Rapping) Let me tell you a story about a boy named Jimmy. One years old, and his first words were mine, mine, gimme (ph). Two years old, he was walking; 3 years old, walking quickly; 4 years old, he was running around the pavements of his city. Five years old, and his daddy told him, listen here, son. You got to learn to be a man, a man, he works for what he want. Six years old...

RASCOE: Who is Jimmy, and what does he represent?

GILL: Well, OK, the thing for me that I think movies do amazingly - right? - movies will create a whole character, make you emotionally invested in them, maybe more emotionally invested in those fictional characters than you are in characters in your real life - the movies like "Scarface" or the series like "Breaking Bad," where you have this story of, like, innocence to corruption, to the point where you almost emphasize with the protagonist, right? You almost feel like you're on that journey so you can see all the steps that happened that made that person end up into a life of corruption. And I hadn't seen that done in music very much. So for that song, I was like, you know what? I want to do the same thing. I want to create a character, and I want to start at the very start, at the moment of innocence, and I want to tell his story from the moment so that everyone can see the little steps that brought him to a life of corruption, a life of misery. And, yeah, it was a really exciting challenge. I thought I'd have a go at it.

GILL: (Rapping) Twenty-three - a life of luxury, crystal and cocaine. Twenty-four - he makes the Forbes list, they're applauding his name. Twenty-five, and his daddy told him, listen here, son. While you are sitting in that palace, that don't mean that you won.

RASCOE: What happens to him at the end of your song?

GILL: You're going to have to listen to it to find out. I can't spoil the ending. That'd be, like, telling you what happens at the end of "Breaking Bad."

RASCOE: You don't want to say. OK.

GILL: Yeah, 'cause if I just tell you the end, if I just give you the pudding without having the main course, then it's going to ruin the meal, do you know what I mean? So you've got to listen to the end”.

Go and follow Ren. Go and show lots and lots of love for his music. I am going to end the feature in a bit. Before that, if you are in two minds as to whether investigate Sick Boi, then the reviews will help. The eighteen-track album was produced by Ren. Genre-hopping but always focused and unique to him, this is someone who is going to ascend to new heights. If you want to know more about the tracks, then Ren has discussed them and gives his insight. There are great interviews like this one, where Ren reveals his health is improving and heading in the right direction. All really positive! An album that should have been on the radar of some really big publications and sites, it is a shame that it slipped by so many. The fact that a Welsh rapper was not seen as essential as other types of artist. The sheer quality of Sick Boi means it definitely was worthy of more focus. Louder Than War were very keen to say some nice things about a biblically good album:

“Hip hop is evolving all the time and Ren has probably produced the most ambitious album we’ve heard for years. The word genius comes to mind. Wayne AF Carey reviews.

Fuckin ‘ell! When you’re slapped by an album like this you know it. How many people do you know who has over a million followers on YouTube and a song with 8 million hits on Spotify? Ren has done all this on his own and self produced it and he’s only on album number two. Jesus. Last time I reviewed a hip hop album it was Slowthai which was highly respected as a debut but this is something else. Ren covers the whole spectrum of hip hop and then some. Not bad for a young lad from Anglesey with high ambitions and major health issues. What impresses most is he’s producing himself and releasing videos with the quality of Childish Gambino with a budget of fuck all.

This is a mammoth album of the best futuristic hip hop you’ve ever heard, knocking everyone else out of the park. Opening track Seven Sins screams his Welsh roots and gives you an insight to his health issues. Sick Boi is a harsh tale of his health and is angry as fuck with the funkiest hip hop beat going. Animal Flow is a growling number that bounces along with it’s George Orwell inspired theme and some intricate lyrics that have Eminem stylings that rage in beauty. He’s clever.

Money Game Part 3 is just classic. Before you listen to this have a listen to Plan B and watch the video for This Is America by Childish Gambino and you’ll get my drift. Best tune and story I’ve heard in years. Brilliant. Lost All Faith is the hip hop singing tune that bends all genres with the skill of a young master. “Halitosis with psychosis”? Fast as lightning rapping and a quality chorus. Genesis kicks in with a lovely guitar lick then lifts with a quality hip hop beat laced with some of the best rapping you’ll hear these days. He makes Kendrick Lamar sound like an amateur. Murderer is hip hop at it’s best. This guy obviously knows what he’s doing. Barrington Levy’s Murder was an influence as you can hear throughout with the reggae vibes. Also a nod to Eminem again. Who the fuck has done something like Eminem for years? Ren has.

Suicide is dark. Losing a friend must be hard and he lays it all out on this track. A low bass line and some great sound going on. The mellowist track on here and sad as fuck. Illest Of Our Time goes all acid house trip hop and could be a take on Ill, or Ill as being sick. The rapping on this is intense and gripping in equal measures showing his skills as a contender for the fast as hell rapping of Busta Rhymes. Love Music Pt.4 goes all old school with some classic samples and great lyrics that I’ve not heard for a while which is an eye opener. “I’m a reprobate, I’m in a public park while I masturbate” Excellent line that Eminem would twat him for! Uninvited is THE pop song on the album with risque lyrics about shagging without a relationship. It’s got all the hallmarks of a soul version of The Mondays Loose Fit. Full of innuendos and a right laugh!

What You Want is a lyrical bit of genius backed by Beastie Boys / House Of Pain attitude laced with a bit of Cypress Hill and some great scratching to make it sound old school. The Hunger is a proper angry bastard with hundred mile an hour lyrics that stun me every time I hear it. Proper bang on stuff! Down On The Beat is a massive banger which shows how talented this guy is. He dabbles with techno to great effect and could probably fill a dancefloor with this funky bastard! It’s fucking massive and takes me back to the late eighties house / techno scene.

Masochist is probably the only tune on this that starts with the ‘motherfuckers. “Don’t trip, I’m a motherfuckin’ masochist” A dark as track that just sounds mental and talks about destroying stuff. His rapping is immense and flows like an overflowing waterfall. Loco is just clever as fuck with the Lord Of The Rings references and lines like “I watch too much Scarface I think I’m Hispanic” It’s beautiful angry rap with a touch of reggae thrown in. Wicked Ways is fucking brilliant. 100 mile an hour rap delivery spitting clever lyrics yet again with venom. Closing track Sick Boi Pt 2 is another dark number which goes all grime in a KRS One way and shits all over some of these crews that claim to be from the bad streets. Classic.

What I love about Ren is he’s not trying to be part of a wannabe hard grime gang of “I’m hard as fuck’ rappers. He’s the real deal. Coping with a crippling array of health issues, living in Brighton via his home of Anglesey he’s the real deal. An astonishing artist who is up there with best hip hop acts of our times. A contender for Album Of The Year”.

An artist I have only recently found via BBC Radio 6 Music, I am now compelled to follow him closely. Ren is a powerhouse of a talent! So thought-provoking, personal and brave, his musical, lyrical, vocal and production talent is stunning!Sick Boi is definitely one of the best albums of the year – and I hope that is reflected as such at the end of the year when people choose their finest of 2023. Best of luck with regards his physical and mental health. Everyone wants the best for Ren. He is someone who is going to go very far and produce staggering music…