this is from Ren community page Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write. Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday. I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again. This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary. Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe. Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then. On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left. Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late. Joe’s body was never found. Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe. As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since. My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew. Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release
He has credited Joe's suicide for preventing his own. As much as he wanted his pain to end, he knew he couldn't do that to the people who loved him, because he'd been in those shoes. A lot of his lyrics come from close to eight years of suffering from undiagnosed Lyme disease and his struggles with the medical system. He did an interview with Justin Hawkins where he describes what he went through. There's a snippet called "What Really Happened to Ren" that's worth watching if you're interested in getting to know this part of Ren's story.
Ren has said that he had serious suicide thoughts during the time that he was so ill that he was in bed all day because of chronic fatigue syndrome. I understand that the first part of this song is his own thoughts of suicide. The 2nd part is clearly about his friend Joe.
I'm 47, and he makes this grown man teary eyed. The Joe story trilogy is: How to Be Me, Suicide, and For Joe. If you do "How To Be Me", do the live version with Chinchilla, and also "Chalk Outlines" live with Chinchilla.
Ren got a phone call from a friend to tell him Joe was talking about jumping. Ren lived closest to the bridge. He ran to get there but Joe had apparently jumped. Although the coastguard and all of their friends searched for days they didn't find him.
Ren recently donated £21k to the coastguards on Anglesey (the Welsh island they all lived on). OK, you need to watch power, loosing it, and bongo bong by The big push. No tears there.
You have to listen to his older music when he was given a small window to live because he was deteriorating physically and mentally and no one knew what was wrong with him. Suicide was a constant on his mind. He finished his album "Freckled Angels" all on his own with no help because he wanted to get that music out to be remembered for something because he was told his days were numbered. How horrible he felt he was counting the days. The first section is about him and his thoughts but the second section is about his best friend Joe.
Ren might make you laugh and Ren might make you cry but he will always make you FEEL. Thank you for your reaction. Please check out For Joe and How To Be Me (live).
You need some happy Ren now. Check out the band called The Big Push. Ren is a member of the band. The best entry point is "I Shot The Sheriff/Road To Zion/Hip Hop". There's multiple versions, the absolute best is the performance with Ren in red suspenders and a grey tank top.
The Joe Story arc begins with : 1)FRECKLED ANGELS ( the song Ren wrote the year following Joe taking his life. Ren dedicated the album to Joe and recently went back home and 1) Raised 21,000 £ for the agency made up entirely of volunteers and presented them that to them- for their tireless and selfless service) 2)HOW TO BE ME ( his struggle to live with it , even years later) ** I HIGHLY RECOMMEND WATCHING THE SHORT/ IG of Ren doing this song while on his own. 3) SUICIDE ( the first part seems to be describing how he felt when in the depths of his illness, his helplessness and hopelessness. The second part came more recently after a live interview with Knox Hill. He had always felt that the song was incomplete. That spoken part came as a stream of consciousness writing, and the tears are Ren , still broken up over it. 4) FOR JOE ( of course, it’s live and one take. Filmed in Calgary. I this felt like the final stage of grief . It contains a bit from each of the others. He played this for Joe’s parents on that same trip home. Then presented them with a check for 100% of the proceeds of Freckled Angels leading directly up to For Joe.
Ren lost his childhood friend Joe Hughes. He had a phone call and ran to the bridge to stop him but was a few minutes too late. It’s very sad indeed. 🖤
The first part is Ren's struggles with ending it and the subject more generally. The 2nd part is all about his best friend Joe who jumped off a bridge into the sea below. Ren hadn't arranged to meet him. When he says he was 'late', he means he was too late to save him, by only a couple of minutes. He'd been called by a friend, who told Ren that Ren was planning to jump. Ren ran all the way there but was just a couple of minutes too late. You know how guilt ALWAYS kicks in in such situations. As he started to make a little bit of money for the the first time this year, he donated the proceeds from sales of a single and album to the lifeboat station that searched for Joe's body and also to Joe's family.
The first half of Suicide is about himself. The second half is about his absolute best friend Joe. He'd had the first part written for some time but wasn't satisfied with it; is wasn't complete. Then he had a point where he was hit with inspiration for the second half and wrote it all out in one shot. He's shared the story a few times. Late one night, one of their mutuals called him to tell him that Joe was on the bridge, and he was the closest so he threw on his clothes and ran for the bridge while his phone was on redial. It was busy up until he got about halfway, at which point it switched to being out of service. As a follow up to this in the same vein, check out the track How To Be Me (live), which was written a while back and is a duet with Chinchilla. There's also a lyric vid, but the live version is so much more. Then after that, for something a bit less heavy, check out For Joe, which was put together as a tribute in preparation to him returning home and visiting people he hasn't really connected with since that time. He also did a fundraiser for the organization that does water search and rescue in the area and spent days trying to find Joe. The pig has a meaning, but he won't tell us because he likes seeing what the fans come up with. My take is that the pig represents the greed of capitalism. He's not a big fan, though he recognizes that he's a part of the same system. The two lines of him in the white top is from his video Sick Boi and goes more into those themes. For more upbeat tracks, there's a couple of older tracks with Eden Nash: Ocean and Humble Others include: Bittersweet Symphony retake; Love Music pt 1; Love Music pt 2; Love music pt 3; Genesis; Power; Right Here, Right Now; What You Want; The Hunger; Losing It retake. Some more hip-hop rap with some amazing videos: Sick Boi; Illest of Our Time; Animal Flow. I look forward to seeing you react to more Ren. ❤
I haven't watched this for a while, so teared up watching with you. Ren's love for his friend Joe, resonates through his work,. Listen to How to Be Me(live), Freckled Angels and For Joe.. Ren donated some profits from this song to the RNLI, and raised £ 21,000, for the charity that searched for Joe on that night.
The part around 5:30 in your video where you stop and go back to hear him again... He's saying, "Sick Boi sick boi bitten by a tick boi" and it's from his song 'Sick Boi' that the album is named after. He's sampling himself. haha. You need to do that one now!
This is the second and maybe last time I will hear this. Thanks for being with me through the song. Ren does bring out things that should be talked about.. sometimes it’s just to personal.
First half was about how his illness made him consider it It eas never the right time Second part was related because his best friend from 8 years old did take his life. The effect on Ren Joe his frieds family was a huge factor in it not being the right time. For Joe is a song following on from this. Written from todays perspective
Another great reaction, thank you. Most of the reactors I've seen were brought to tears; I sure was. Please do yourself a kindness and watch Ren being his most unserious, serious artist, and flipping the script in "Losing It"
Its cool bro. Ive spent months binging Ren and the Big Push and all his collabs and their songs. And all of the reaction videos to ren and friends. Theres just so much there.
Never apologize for having emotions. Ren shows you the parts of you that needs healing. For Joe is the continuation of this one which can also be quite heavy but he has a lot of other more fun songs like Losing it you can watch. Also Ren and Chinchilla, you cannot go run with them
I concur. ‘For Joe’ is bottle to the darkness of this empty cup. Please continue your journey. I hope you dad is doing better. Is alway a seismic when parents are ill.
Watch freckled angels and for joe and there are some interviews where he talks about his friend joe. Its a hard pill to swallow. This song makes me cry no matter how many times i hear it
Gotta check out ‘For Joe’. It comes next in the story about Joe. Freckled Angels came first.. then How To Be Me (live).. then this one.. then For Joe. ❤❤❤
Ohhh you haven't seen his song sick boy yet have you? That's where that "sick boy sick boy bitten by a tick boy" and tbe other sample came from. You should check it out! 💜💜
He wrote the first part of the song a while ago but had never felt it was complete, and then in an interview with Knox Hill he talked about his friend Joe who took his own life when they were 20. Having talked about it in the interview he wrote the second part and added it.
There’s several songs referencing his experience if his friend Joe’s last night on the bridge. Freckled Angel. How to be me, Suic!de and For Joe. It’s interesting to watch them order as he lives through the next dozen years and his illness and now his ongoing recovery and, his yR driven success. Ren grew up in a village in Wales, the school was small and the kids were tight and Joe Hughes was his best friend from childhood. Hie didn’t make it out of his teenage years. Ren was alerted and ran for the bridge where Joe was reported to be, a bridge over a strait between the mainland and an island. But Joe want there when he got there. Due to the tides and currents, his body was never found, though the Royal Naval Lifeboat Institution searched for days. Around the time this was released earlier this year, Ren did Oman online fundraiser for the RNLI and for Joes family ‘we’ raised over £8000
I believe that the first part IS about his thoughts. It was written a few years ago. After an interview in which he talked to Knox Hill about his friend Joe's suicide...he added that second part. THAT is of course very personal. The song Freckled Angels was written for Joe after his death. The best way to experience this is 1. Freckled Angels 2 Suicide 3. For Joe. I think he put it to bed with that last one.
I highly recommend the live versions of HOW TO BE ME (also about his friend Joe), and CHALK OUTLINES, both are duets with Chinchilla. They're gorgeous.
If you watch his interview with knox hill ren talks about the night it happened. Also if you want too listen to his rapping try losing it, what you want, illist of our time or the hunger
First of all, a big hug across the pond for you and for not repressing your emotions. Ren usually leaves a valuable comment on his videos which give you a first hand explanation. FOR JOE is the cathartic continuation to this chapter in Ren's life. Having had my own share of friends and family losing their struggles, FOR JOE still gets me though those are more uplifting tears. So, be aware! Cheers from Germany 🤘
Ren has done several interviews with UA-cam reactors. See if you can give it a view, Justin Hawkins & Knox Hill….etc. It will explain a lot of questions.
Ren invites us to interpret the meaning of the pig in his videos. There IS a meaning but he will not say at this time as it might be the subject of a future song. For me, the pig represents greed and corruption as an entity, a tangible and pervasive poison.
Ren has done some interviews with other reactors. The 3 I can remember are Justin Hawkins, Knox Hill, and Black Pegasas, and there was a female one to but I haven't seen it and came remember name, but it was said on hers that after he did his one with Knox Hill, he actually went back and added the last part to this song just before it released. You can find knox reacting to that segment on his channel too.
He's said before in earlier videos that the pig represents health professionals, but I think it's also just become a visual theme. You can read about his friend Joe's death in Ren's comments under the video.
You want backstory? We got backstory. 😉 This is what Ren wrote on his community page before Suic!de was released: ------------------------------------- Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write. Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday. I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again. This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary. Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe. Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then. On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left. Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late. Joe’s body was never found. Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe. As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since. My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew. Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release. You can turn on notifications by following the link in the comments below During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised.
In the worst of his illness he used to beg his mother to say it was ok for him to kill himself. He saw no way out. But his experience with Joe's death made it so he woukd never do it without permission. That night he was calked by a mutual friend at 3 am and he ran to tbe bridge, but got there too late. He quit drinking the night they had a benefit for the lifeboat team that looked for the body. I ofyen wonder if hw thought alcohol played a big part in the death. He has bern sober 13 years now. He wrote the second part just a few weeks ago after his interview with Knox Hill, where he told the story details for the first time Premier day was the day the internet cried. He did a Twitch next day to be sure we were all right.❤❤❤
another great reaction. the comments explain most of how this song came about, but 1 thing i dont think i saw mentioned was that i think ren said the S word 35 times (approx) through this song on purpose! The video got the youtube warning put up before it (which instantly loses it potential views) and the fact he said the S word so many times through it says to me he really didnt care about views or revenue from it, but that its something that people SHOULD BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT without censorship! Why should it be swept under the carpet all the time especially when there are so many people doing it in recent years!
For an intro to Ren's rap catalog try Sick Boi and Genisis - no warning labels required. For more advanced hearing try Hunger and Loosing It. I personally like his cover of Bittersweet Symphony.
I appreciate all that. In about too do a reaction in a few.. I have 4 more in the chamber from last sunday, I binged a little... Just been a busy week.. But again, thank you, will check them out.
❤ #Ren I think the pig represents greed 🐷 Ren doesn't say what the pig represents 💙 you should listen to Freckled angels & For Joe 💔 all for his friend Joe #RIPJOE
He had no warning signs from Joe, so he did best himself up over it. Ren has brought this issue up front and center. It is sad. But people are thinking now.
Someone commented Ren previously said the pig represents health professionals ... but I also saw a livestream where he said ... he knows what it means to him but he's not going to divulge ( at that moment ) better that way in my opinion ... make it mean what it means to YOU ... ..
I'll have to disagree about the suicide never felt like the right time. Sometimes it does feel like the right time , some may get upset about that statementbut it's the truth. Doesn't make it right , but realistically to some it does feel like a right time.
this is from Ren community page Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write.
Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday.
I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again.
This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary.
Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe.
Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then.
On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left.
Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late.
Joe’s body was never found.
Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe.
As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew.
Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release
He has credited Joe's suicide for preventing his own. As much as he wanted his pain to end, he knew he couldn't do that to the people who loved him, because he'd been in those shoes.
A lot of his lyrics come from close to eight years of suffering from undiagnosed Lyme disease and his struggles with the medical system.
He did an interview with Justin Hawkins where he describes what he went through. There's a snippet called "What Really Happened to Ren" that's worth watching if you're interested in getting to know this part of Ren's story.
View his qRen's for Joe.
The day this came out there were thousands of us crying together ❤ it’s a hard one
Yup I was fine-ish up until Ren's voice broke ....tissue time :)
Ren has said that he had serious suicide thoughts during the time that he was so ill that he was in bed all day because of chronic fatigue syndrome. I understand that the first part of this song is his own thoughts of suicide. The 2nd part is clearly about his friend Joe.
A great uplifting song by Ren is "Power"
I'm 47, and he makes this grown man teary eyed.
The Joe story trilogy is: How to Be Me, Suicide, and For Joe.
If you do "How To Be Me", do the live version with Chinchilla, and also "Chalk Outlines" live with Chinchilla.
@sorenm.lairdsorries7547 Love that he concludes "For Joe" with Freckled Angels. ❤️
Ren got a phone call from a friend to tell him Joe was talking about jumping. Ren lived closest to the bridge. He ran to get there but Joe had apparently jumped. Although the coastguard and all of their friends searched for days they didn't find him.
Ren recently donated £21k to the coastguards on Anglesey (the Welsh island they all lived on).
OK, you need to watch power, loosing it, and bongo bong by The big push. No tears there.
If you goto rens page, look on his community tab, he wrote a post where he talked about it.
Then Ren put himself thru hell thinking he may have been just 2minutes late. 🥲
You have to listen to his older music when he was given a small window to live because he was deteriorating physically and mentally and no one knew what was wrong with him. Suicide was a constant on his mind. He finished his album "Freckled Angels" all on his own with no help because he wanted to get that music out to be remembered for something because he was told his days were numbered. How horrible he felt he was counting the days. The first section is about him and his thoughts but the second section is about his best friend Joe.
Ren might make you laugh and Ren might make you cry but he will always make you FEEL. Thank you for your reaction. Please check out For Joe and How To Be Me (live).
You need some happy Ren now. Check out the band called The Big Push. Ren is a member of the band. The best entry point is "I Shot The Sheriff/Road To Zion/Hip Hop". There's multiple versions, the absolute best is the performance with Ren in red suspenders and a grey tank top.
He already did… try
The Big Push - War Pig
same day
Yes yes yes
The Joe Story arc begins with :
1)FRECKLED ANGELS ( the song Ren wrote the year following Joe taking his life. Ren dedicated the album to Joe and recently went back home and 1) Raised 21,000 £ for the agency made up entirely of volunteers and presented them that to them- for their tireless and selfless service)
2)HOW TO BE ME ( his struggle to live with it , even years later) ** I HIGHLY RECOMMEND WATCHING THE SHORT/ IG of Ren doing this song while on his own.
3) SUICIDE ( the first part seems to be describing how he felt when in the depths of his illness, his helplessness and hopelessness. The second part came more recently after a live interview with Knox Hill. He had always felt that the song was incomplete. That spoken part came as a stream of consciousness writing, and the tears are Ren , still broken up over it.
4) FOR JOE ( of course, it’s live and one take. Filmed in Calgary. I this felt like the final stage of grief . It contains a bit from each of the others. He played this for Joe’s parents on that same trip home. Then presented them with a check for 100% of the proceeds of Freckled Angels leading directly up to For Joe.
He also wrote the song Freckled Angels about Joe, his friend, and played it at his Memorial Service.
Ren lost his childhood friend Joe Hughes. He had a phone call and ran to the bridge to stop him but was a few minutes too late. It’s very sad indeed. 🖤
The first part is Ren's struggles with ending it and the subject more generally. The 2nd part is all about his best friend Joe who jumped off a bridge into the sea below. Ren hadn't arranged to meet him. When he says he was 'late', he means he was too late to save him, by only a couple of minutes. He'd been called by a friend, who told Ren that Ren was planning to jump. Ren ran all the way there but was just a couple of minutes too late. You know how guilt ALWAYS kicks in in such situations. As he started to make a little bit of money for the the first time this year, he donated the proceeds from sales of a single and album to the lifeboat station that searched for Joe's body and also to Joe's family.
The first half of Suicide is about himself. The second half is about his absolute best friend Joe. He'd had the first part written for some time but wasn't satisfied with it; is wasn't complete. Then he had a point where he was hit with inspiration for the second half and wrote it all out in one shot.
He's shared the story a few times. Late one night, one of their mutuals called him to tell him that Joe was on the bridge, and he was the closest so he threw on his clothes and ran for the bridge while his phone was on redial. It was busy up until he got about halfway, at which point it switched to being out of service.
As a follow up to this in the same vein, check out the track How To Be Me (live), which was written a while back and is a duet with Chinchilla. There's also a lyric vid, but the live version is so much more. Then after that, for something a bit less heavy, check out For Joe, which was put together as a tribute in preparation to him returning home and visiting people he hasn't really connected with since that time. He also did a fundraiser for the organization that does water search and rescue in the area and spent days trying to find Joe.
The pig has a meaning, but he won't tell us because he likes seeing what the fans come up with. My take is that the pig represents the greed of capitalism. He's not a big fan, though he recognizes that he's a part of the same system. The two lines of him in the white top is from his video Sick Boi and goes more into those themes.
For more upbeat tracks, there's a couple of older tracks with Eden Nash: Ocean and Humble
Others include: Bittersweet Symphony retake; Love Music pt 1; Love Music pt 2; Love music pt 3; Genesis; Power; Right Here, Right Now; What You Want; The Hunger; Losing It retake.
Some more hip-hop rap with some amazing videos: Sick Boi; Illest of Our Time; Animal Flow.
I look forward to seeing you react to more Ren. ❤
I haven't watched this for a while, so teared up watching with you.
Ren's love for his friend Joe, resonates through his work,. Listen to How to Be Me(live), Freckled Angels and For Joe..
Ren donated some profits from this song to the RNLI, and raised £ 21,000, for the charity that searched for Joe on that night.
The part around 5:30 in your video where you stop and go back to hear him again... He's saying, "Sick Boi sick boi bitten by a tick boi" and it's from his song 'Sick Boi' that the album is named after. He's sampling himself. haha. You need to do that one now!
This is the second and maybe last time I will hear this. Thanks for being with me through the song. Ren does bring out things that should be talked about.. sometimes it’s just to personal.
First half was about how his illness made him consider it
It eas never the right time
Second part was related because his best friend from 8 years old did take his life.
The effect on Ren Joe his frieds family was a huge factor in it not being the right time.
For Joe is a song following on from this. Written from todays perspective
Another great reaction, thank you. Most of the reactors I've seen were brought to tears; I sure was.
Please do yourself a kindness and watch Ren being his most unserious, serious artist, and flipping the script in "Losing It"
Its cool bro. Ive spent months binging Ren and the Big Push and all his collabs and their songs. And all of the reaction videos to ren and friends. Theres just so much there.
Never apologize for having emotions. Ren shows you the parts of you that needs healing.
For Joe is the continuation of this one which can also be quite heavy but he has a lot of other more fun songs like Losing it you can watch.
Also Ren and Chinchilla, you cannot go run with them
I concur. ‘For Joe’ is bottle to the darkness of this empty cup. Please continue your journey.
I hope you dad is doing better. Is alway a seismic when parents are ill.
Watch freckled angels and for joe and there are some interviews where he talks about his friend joe. Its a hard pill to swallow. This song makes me cry no matter how many times i hear it
Gotta check out ‘For Joe’. It comes next in the story about Joe. Freckled Angels came first.. then How To Be Me (live).. then this one.. then For Joe. ❤❤❤
Ohhh you haven't seen his song sick boy yet have you? That's where that "sick boy sick boy bitten by a tick boy" and tbe other sample came from. You should check it out! 💜💜
You’ll get more out of his live version dedicated to his best friend Joe.
He wrote the first part of the song a while ago but had never felt it was complete, and then in an interview with Knox Hill he talked about his friend Joe who took his own life when they were 20. Having talked about it in the interview he wrote the second part and added it.
There’s several songs referencing his experience if his friend Joe’s last night on the bridge. Freckled Angel. How to be me, Suic!de and For Joe. It’s interesting to watch them order as he lives through the next dozen years and his illness and now his ongoing recovery and, his yR driven success.
Ren grew up in a village in Wales, the school was small and the kids were tight and Joe Hughes was his best friend from childhood. Hie didn’t make it out of his teenage years. Ren was alerted and ran for the bridge where Joe was reported to be, a bridge over a strait between the mainland and an island. But Joe want there when he got there. Due to the tides and currents, his body was never found, though the Royal Naval Lifeboat Institution searched for days.
Around the time this was released earlier this year, Ren did Oman online fundraiser for the RNLI and for Joes family ‘we’ raised over £8000
I believe that the first part IS about his thoughts. It was written a few years ago. After an interview in which he talked to Knox Hill about his friend Joe's suicide...he added that second part. THAT is of course very personal. The song Freckled Angels was written for Joe after his death. The best way to experience this is 1. Freckled Angels 2 Suicide 3. For Joe. I think he put it to bed with that last one.
I highly recommend the live versions of HOW TO BE ME (also about his friend Joe), and CHALK OUTLINES, both are duets with Chinchilla. They're gorgeous.
If you watch his interview with knox hill ren talks about the night it happened. Also if you want too listen to his rapping try losing it, what you want, illist of our time or the hunger
First of all, a big hug across the pond for you and for not repressing your emotions.
Ren usually leaves a valuable comment on his videos which give you a first hand explanation.
FOR JOE is the cathartic continuation to this chapter in Ren's life. Having had my own share of friends and family losing their struggles, FOR JOE still gets me though those are more uplifting tears. So, be aware!
Cheers from Germany 🤘
This was definitely a tough one. Great reaction though ❤
Ren has done several interviews with UA-cam reactors. See if you can give it a view, Justin Hawkins & Knox Hill….etc. It will explain a lot of questions.
For rapping: The Hunger, Losing it, Illest of our time, Down on the beat .... to name few...enjoy
Ren invites us to interpret the meaning of the pig in his videos. There IS a meaning but he will not say at this time as it might be the subject of a future song. For me, the pig represents greed and corruption as an entity, a tangible and pervasive poison.
You should play the follow up song called for Joe.Joe was a chidhood freind
Glad your Dad is doing well!! ❤
That whole binging thing weve called Ren’s Rabbit Hole and #TheRenEffect. Affectionately.
Watch paint it black by the big push itl Cheer you up
Ren has done some interviews with other reactors. The 3 I can remember are Justin Hawkins, Knox Hill, and Black Pegasas, and there was a female one to but I haven't seen it and came remember name, but it was said on hers that after he did his one with Knox Hill, he actually went back and added the last part to this song just before it released. You can find knox reacting to that segment on his channel too.
Rosalie Reacts is the woman reactor who interviewed him.
@@NilZed1 thank you
He's said before in earlier videos that the pig represents health professionals, but I think it's also just become a visual theme. You can read about his friend Joe's death in Ren's comments under the video.
Oh losing it will show his rapping
You want backstory? We got backstory. 😉
This is what Ren wrote on his community page before Suic!de was released:
-------------------------------------
Today I want to write something beautiful and eloquent but I’ve been staring at my computer screen for the past 10 minutes blankly. So I’ll just write.
Today, the 1st of June is my friend Joe’s birthday.
I first met Joe when I was 8 years old, my friend Josh said I had to meet this guy, so we both walked over to his, it took about 10 minutes from my house. I was greeted by this kid covered head to toe in freckles, he grinned at us, climbed onto the back of his sofa and screamed “Swanton Bomb!” then front flipped off the top and landed right onto his back on a stone floor. He lay still for a moment, twitched a few times, then got up, grinned at us, brushed himself off, and did it again.
This was Joe. He’d do anything to make people laugh. He ended up becoming one of my best friends. He was there when we stole our first cigarettes out of his mums pack, way too young. He was there when I had my first kiss, with a girl twice my size on the back of the 42 bus. He was there when I first got so drunk I threw up in the woods after drinking as much white lightning Cider as we could. I was there when he did his first backflip on skates, and saw him do a 720 off of the pier cave, that moment became legendary.
Joe was the funny one in our friend group, he’d make us laugh till it hurt. No one had a bad word to say about him. It was impossible not to like him. Usually we put celebrities, athletes and actors on pedestals, turn them into role models and admire them from a far. The person I admired was Joe.
Him and Sagar knew every word to the songs id write, we’d get drunk at parties and they’d be singing along as loud as they could. It gave me a lot of confidence back then.
On Christmas Eve 2010 I was sitting in a pub with Joe, he’d been feeling low after a couple of consecutive break ups. He tried to check himself into a mental health outpatient facility a few weeks earlier but they turned him away because he didn’t have an appointment. He turned to me and said that sometimes he wished he could just walk into the sea and keep walking. He said it in a kind of half joking throw away comment type of way, then took a sip of his drink, walked over to the juke box and put Dig by Incubus on. If I knew that was the last time I’d see Joe id have hugged him, told him how much I loved him, how much I looked up to him, how much we all loved him, and I wouldn’t have left that pub. I didn’t know that, so I finished my drink, said happy Christmas and left.
Two nights after Christmas I got woken up by a phone call at 3am, it was my friend Ella. She told me Joe was on the Menai Bridge, a large suspension bridge connecting the main land to the isle of Anglesey where we lived. He’d been on the phone to her in tears saying goodbye. He told her to tell everyone he loved them. I pulled on my clothes as fast as I could and started running toward the bridge. It was up a hill. I lived about a ten minute walk away, I could run it in five. As I ran I started dialling then redialing his number. The line was busy, which was a good sign, it meant he was still on the phone to someone. As I got about halfway, the busy tone changed. It told me the line was out of service. I got a sinking feeling and picked up my speed. I arrived to the bridge minutes after I left my house. It was deafeningly quiet. I was the first person to arrive. I got there probably about 2 minutes too late.
Joe’s body was never found.
Initially we refused to believe he was gone. The coastguard came out that night, with boats, and helicopters. Me and my friends spent the next 10 days putting up missing posters everywhere we could, walking up and down beaches with flashlights, getting about 3 hours sleep a night. When you’re walking up and down a beach with a torch when its dark everything looks like a body. We still haven’t found Joe.
As his birthday came around, I wrote a song, freckled angels, a song I dedicated to Joe which I sang in front of his friends and family. A charity football match was put on for him, raising money for the RNLI where I won two bottles of wine in a raffle, I drank them both as quickly as I could, naturally, turned to my friend and probably slurred something along the lines of “This is the last time I ever drink” That was 12 years ago, I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since.
My first ever album I named Freckled Angels in tribute of one of the best people I ever knew.
Skip forward some years. I’d been sitting on this song I wrote a few years ago. It always felt a little incomplete. It was going to be my next release, but I was dreading it because of this feeling of incompletion. I decided, very last minute, to do something about it. I sat by my piano, and the rest of the song fell out of me. I hadn’t thought about Joe in a little while, and the song initially wasn’t going to be about him, but the words all fell out of me. I wrote and recorded a whole 2 minutes extra, recording each part as I wrote it. Tears spewing out of my eyes pretty much the whole time, and decided not to do my usual thing of perfecting each line, I just recorded every line as it came. This will be my next release. You can turn on notifications by following the link in the comments below
During this campaign I will be raising money for the RNLI, the group of brave men and women who spent hours tirelessly looking for Joe after the night he went missing. I'll also be donating 50% of the profit on all copies of the 'Freckled Angels' album directly to Joes family as a nice surprise gift. I will include links to the RNLI donation page below where 100% of the money will go to support them, I will be travelling to the UK later this month to make a music video, and have carved out a couple of days where I will travel to my home town on the isle of Anglesey to present the royal national lifeboat institution with a cheque of all the money raised.
In the worst of his illness he used to beg his mother to say it was ok for him to kill himself. He saw no way out. But his experience with Joe's death made it so he woukd never do it without permission.
That night he was calked by a mutual friend at 3 am and he ran to tbe bridge, but got there too late. He quit drinking the night they had a benefit for the lifeboat team that looked for the body. I ofyen wonder if hw thought alcohol played a big part in the death. He has bern sober 13 years now.
He wrote the second part just a few weeks ago after his interview with Knox Hill, where he told the story details for the first time
Premier day was the day the internet cried.
He did a Twitch next day to be sure we were all right.❤❤❤
For Joe is the continuation of this one.
It's an important one.
I really really enjoy your reactions.. it makes me cry every time ...hahah keep the same shirt on doesn't matter 😅 we know its the same day ❤
Steve Harwell of the band Smash Mouth died today. Very tragic. RIP to a legend.
The two clips where he's wearing the white top are from his song Sick Boi.
another great reaction. the comments explain most of how this song came about, but 1 thing i dont think i saw mentioned was that i think ren said the S word 35 times (approx) through this song on purpose! The video got the youtube warning put up before it (which instantly loses it potential views) and the fact he said the S word so many times through it says to me he really didnt care about views or revenue from it, but that its something that people SHOULD BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT without censorship! Why should it be swept under the carpet all the time especially when there are so many people doing it in recent years!
Everyone will tell you what the pig means.. but Ren has not confirmed any of the theories.
For an intro to Ren's rap catalog try Sick Boi and Genisis - no warning labels required. For more advanced hearing try Hunger and Loosing It.
I personally like his cover of Bittersweet Symphony.
I appreciate all that. In about too do a reaction in a few.. I have 4 more in the chamber from last sunday, I binged a little... Just been a busy week.. But again, thank you, will check them out.
Just got here, subbed. Please listen to Power to lift the spirits! 🎶🕊🎶
Please listen to sic boi!❤❤❤ Also I hope all is well with your father and loved ones...
I still wonder about the deep scar over the bridge of his nose.
Symbolic?
❤ #Ren
I think the pig represents greed 🐷 Ren doesn't say what the pig represents 💙 you should listen to Freckled angels & For Joe 💔 all for his friend Joe #RIPJOE
Exactly, and the pig is showing up on all his videos that are going on his sick boi album.
He had no warning signs from Joe, so he did best himself up over it. Ren has brought this issue up front and center. It is sad. But people are thinking now.
Beat not best.
I like the “doodoo”.
Yes we should warn you, ok ✅
You need to do sick boi reaction to gr the sick boi reference
❤😢😢😢😢
💙 rip joe
Watch Sick Boi...will explain some of those lines
Try "what you want" or "losing it" that should pick you up a bit.
To learn about the pig you have to do Animal flow
His best friend Joe 😢
Someone commented Ren previously said the pig represents health professionals ...
but I also saw a livestream where he said ... he knows what it means to him but he's not going to divulge
( at that moment ) better that way in my opinion ... make it mean what it means to YOU ... ..
I agree.
just sayin' hi, friend. kathleen
I'll have to disagree about the suicide never felt like the right time. Sometimes it does feel like the right time , some may get upset about that statementbut it's the truth. Doesn't make it right , but realistically to some it does feel like a right time.
@toxicgnome8445 it was his best friend Joe there is a song Ren made for his friend i think you will love it the song is called Ren - FOR JOE