A few weeks ago I saw this video in a Facebook post by Alex Leech, over in the U.K.. He said he'd been up late the night before digging into this guy's music, after watching this video. So I watched the video. "Hi Ren" by Ren, U.K. rapper/songwriter/musician. This is an incredible piece of art. This video made me look at my own creative work, and start thinking about all the ideas I haven't done. It also got me writing poetry again, after 14 years of not writing.
I thought the video had 2.4 million views that night that I first watched it. It had 2.9 million the next morning. It has 5.7 million now, a month later. This isn't a major pop star singing bubble gum syrupy lyrics about her last boyfriend. This is a fucking intense video talking about deep, dark, hard subjects. I know Ren isn't about "numbers, statistics, or stats." But this amazing, deep, intense, music video was getting 100,000 views a day, just by word of mouth. He tried something really freakin' hard with "Hi Ren." And Ren and crew knocked it out of the park with this video.
Like Alex, I started digging into what else the guy has out. He suggested "The Ballad of Jenny and Screech." I looked up those, and "The Ballad of Violet," and somehow watched them in the right order, seperately. Mind blown sounds so cliche', but that's what it was. I was hooked.
I kept digging. Ren's got a whole bunch of music, a wide variety, going back years. He also has a crazy personal story, 10 years sick with Lyme disease, and stress-induced psychosis. There are a couple of really dark videos of him form years ago, in that struggle. This guy is brilliant, he's done a bunch of music, many different styles, and this got me re-thinking all my own creative work. While I'm down and out financially, I put out a lot of work, blogs and drawings, primarily. Ren's work got me thinking of the deeper, smarter, crazier ideas that I haven't done. His rhymes reminded me of some of my poems I wrote years ago. I started writing poems again, after not writing any rhymes for 14 years. This one song, and the other work backing it, really motivated me to step up my own work. No other artist has done this, since I discovered Matisyahu 17-18 years ago, and first seeing Kerry Getz play live at Triangle Square, 3 or 4 years before that.
For the last month, I've traveled down the Ren rabbit hole, and I still haven't watched it all. Ren's a gernius. Maybe his work is for you. Maybe it's not. This post is to introduce some of you to Ren, the musician, the way Alex Leech's Facebook post introduced his work to me. Here are some of my favorites of his...
My favorite reaction video to "Hi-Ren"- "Therapist reacts to Hi-Ren"
Ren X Chinchilla - "Chalk Outlines"
"The Ballad of Jenny & Screech" (full) This is the song I've been listening to every day...
Ren X Chinchilla- "How to Be Me" (live)
"Bittersweet Symphony" (Verve cover- sort of)
The Big Push- "Paint it Black"- Rolling Stones cover (yeah, Ren plays bass, too)
The Big Push- "War Pigs"- (Black Sabbath cover)
There's a whole lot more to discover. Maybe you'll get sucked down into the rabbit hole, too.
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