#15 – The Phenomenon of Ren

This weekend has seen the culmination and result of a coordinated campaign to get a new album to perform as well as possible at its release. There’s nothing remarkable or new about that for sure. But the real story here is who, how, why and where.

Ren’s album Sick Boi has just claimed the number 1 spot on the U.K. Album Charts (20.10.23) at the first time of asking beating the likes of Rick Astley, Drake, The Streets, even Pink Floyd to the top of the pile. It’s an incredible achievement.

The journey for me started late. I discovered him unsurprisingly as a reaction request in April 23. I couldn’t have guessed that 6 months later, I’d be at the pinnacle of the ride with the rest of the RENaissance and RENegades.

His story is that of rags to nearly riches, to despair and then clawing his way back to claim what was cruelly snatched away.

Early on in his career he was signed to major record label Sony. For his adult life, Ren has battled illness, with a misdiagnoses of mental illness, flu, and medical collective shrugs, to eventually knowing he’d been carrying Lyme disease and autoimmunity after being bitten by a tick. The years that passed without a diagnoses made the process of the disease worse. As his illness made it more difficult to perform and to deliver the label’s expectations, he was dropped.

“Years before I was diagnosed correctly with autoimmunity, Lyme disease and brain damage, I was misdiagnosed as bipolar and spent years bouncing back and forth between therapists and trialling different antidepressants all the while getting worse and worse.”

My first exposure to Ren was, as is the case with almost everyone else, the viral video Hi Ren. In this age where we endlessly scroll through legions of videos and never ending pages of content, it’s hard to sift the wheat from the chaff. Had I stumbled across this via the algorithm I don’t think my reaction would have been any different from discovering this as a request from one of my subs. Initially I was unsure what to make of the piece, and as it unfolded I became beguiled, fascinated and emotionally involved. It felt different and vulnerable, I felt uncomfortable, voyeuristic almost, watching a human at their most vulnerable and unguarded expressing their deepest anxieties with themselves, both sides of the subconscious battling to make themselves heard. It is not easy watching. This truly is art.

Ren’s brutally honest and no bullshit approach to making music is a double edged sword. While we the audience appreciate and admire him for his authenticity and humanity, the same traits have made his music unplayable on radio and television. I checked…. He is number one in the album charts but not play listed (a, b, or c) on Radio One, 6Music or Radio 1 Extra. This is unfortunate because we all know how ambivalent a lot of listeners are. If the music isn’t served to them on a plate, they are unlikely to seek it out themselves. And I should also reference back to my point about sifting the wheat from the chaff. People don’t have the time to find good music. With the extra constraint airplay acceptability places onto music, it’s no wonder so much flies under the radar.

So, with all this adversity, it’s incredible that anyone at all has heard of and buying Ren’s music. The biggest coup he achieved was the viral video Hi Ren. It took on a life of its own and to date has been viewed 20,000,000 times on YouTube. Add that to all the reaction videos (hello there!) it must have been seen 40,000,000 times. Clever Ren. He absolutely welcomed the reaction community with open arms. We helped catapult his image, video, song and ethos to a waiting audience. But this wasn’t a cynical way of angling free marketing and exposure. If he wasn’t genuine and making very real human connections with us all, it wouldn’t have worked. He speaks with truth and he speaks to all of us about all of us. We can’t walk in Ren’s shoes but we can absolutely identify with the truths he lays bare with his word smithery.

It doesn’t matter that you don’t like rap and hip hop. Maybe a difficulty with appreciating the genre is not having a connection with it. It doesn’t speak to me or describe a life or existence that I recognise. Ren does. I like it that he’s not bigging himself up, not talking about cars, women, bling lifestyle, jewellery, shallow glossy fakery. Being real, being vulnerable, being an artist, being a human. Being the best kind of human. His appeal across ages, genders and genes has made him somewhat unique. It’s truly inspirational stuff.

If you haven’t done so already, get on the bandwagon, Ren’s got things you should hear!