Hi Ren: The Most Honest Eight Minutes in Modern Music

I first heard Hi Ren about two and a half years ago. Someone posted it in a Facebook group, and I almost scrolled past it. I’m glad I didn’t.

I’ve been obsessed with music my whole life. Proper obsessed – the kind where you know the deep cuts, the B-sides, the stories behind the songs. But this felt different. This felt like someone had taken everything I thought I knew about what a song could do and just… expanded it.

Watch it first. Don’t read ahead. Just watch.

What is Hi Ren About? (Quick Answer)

Hi Ren is an eight-minute conversation between Ren and a personification of his illness, self-doubt, and inner darkness. Released in 2022, it’s not quite rap, not quite spoken word, not quite acoustic ballad – it defies categorization intentionally.

The song captures a brutal, honest dialogue between two versions of himself: the “dark Ren” who represents years of chronic illness, self-criticism, and creative doubt, and the “light Ren” trying to recover and create. What makes it extraordinary is how raw and unfiltered it feels – there’s no backing band, no studio polish, just one man and an acoustic guitar having a genuine psychological battle in real time.

For fans, it resonates because it articulates the internal warfare that chronic illness, mental health struggles, and creative self-doubt create – things most of us feel but rarely hear expressed so honestly. But there’s so much more to unpack here…

What You Just Watched

If you actually watched it – and I hope you did – you’ve just experienced something that doesn’t really fit into normal categories. It’s not quite rap, not quite spoken word, not quite acoustic ballad. It’s all of those things and none of them.

Ren’s got lyrics on par with Dylan. Acoustic guitar skills like John Williams. Rap flow like Eminem. And a voice that shifts from angel to demon and back again, sometimes in the same breath.

But what makes Hi Ren actually matter isn’t the technical skill, though there’s plenty of that. It’s what the song is about. Or more accurately, what it does.

The Performance Itself

The video starts with Ren being dragged out in a wheelchair by someone wearing a pig mask. I’ve seen people interpret this different ways – maybe it’s the health profession, maybe it’s society, maybe it’s just the absurdity of illness itself. Ren’s never explained it, and I think that’s deliberate.

What happens next is just Ren and an acoustic guitar in what looks like a basement in Brighton. No backing band. No production tricks. Just him, sitting in a chair, swiveling from side to side as he performs this conversation with himself.

And that swiveling matters. When he’s the calm, rational side – the one trying to recover, trying to heal – he sits one way. When he’s the critical voice, the ego, the darkness – he turns the other direction. It’s such a simple visual choice, but it makes the internal battle physical. You can literally see him turning against himself.

The lights flicker when the dark voice speaks. Harsh, aggressive, unstable. The whole thing feels intimate in a way that’s almost uncomfortable. Like you’ve walked into someone’s therapy session and they’ve just decided to let you stay.

This was filmed in one take. Well, technically it was the best of four takes, but we’ll get to that story later. The point is: what you’re watching is live. Every word, every note, every shift in tone – it’s happening in real time. There’s no safety net.

The Battle Begins

“Hi there Ren, it’s been a little while, did you miss me?”

That’s how it starts. Casual. Almost friendly. The dark voice greeting Ren like an old mate he hasn’t seen in a while. And immediately you know this isn’t going to be a simple song about overcoming adversity or finding the light or whatever uplifting nonsense we’ve been sold.

This is psychological warfare.

“You thought you’d buried me, didn’t you? Risky.”

The dark voice knows exactly how to get under Ren’s skin. It’s manipulative, taunting, patient. It’s been waiting. And the light voice – the Ren who’s trying to recover – responds with exactly the kind of boundary-setting you’d learn in therapy:

“Hi Ren, I’ve been taking some time to be distant. I’ve been taking some time to be still.”

But the dark voice doesn’t care about boundaries. It never does.

“You’re the sheep, I’m the shepherd, not your place to lead me.”

That line hit me hard the first time I heard it. That’s your own brain telling you that you don’t even get to be in control. That’s the voice that says you’re not the author of your own life – you’re just along for the ride while something darker steers.

I spent 30 years as a mental health nurse. I’ve sat with people in crisis, listened to them describe their internal battles, helped them find language for things that felt unspeakable. And I’ve never heard that particular experience – the loss of agency to your own mind – captured more accurately than in that one line.

The Artist’s Fear

All artists know this feeling. Am I good enough? Am I original? Am I just copying everyone who came before me?

The dark voice goes straight for those insecurities:

“Man, you’re not original, you criminal, rip-off artist. The pinnacle of your success is stealing other people’s material.”

It brings up Eminem. It brings up Plan B. It mocks the very idea that Ren has something unique to offer. And that’s the thing about depression, about anxiety, about that critical voice – it doesn’t fight fair. It uses truth as a weapon. Of course Ren has influences. Every artist does. But the dark voice twists that into theft, into fraud, into proof that he’s worthless.

And Ren fights back:

“My music is really connecting, and the people who find it respect it. And for me, that’s enough ’cause this life’s been tough.”

That’s not bravado. That’s someone holding on to the one thing that makes sense when everything else is falling apart. The music connects. People find it. That matters. That has to be enough.

But the dark voice isn’t done. It never is.

The News Flash

Then comes the section that gave me chills.

“News flash: I was created at the dawn of creation. I am temptation, I am the snake in Eden.”

The dark voice stops being personal and goes mythological. Biblical. It claims to be fundamental – not just Ren’s depression, but the depression, the darkness that’s existed since the beginning of everything.

“I am sin with no rhyme or reason. Sun of the morning, Lucifer, antichrist. Father of lies, Mephistopheles.”

This is where the performance gets genuinely unsettling. The lights are strobing. Ren’s voice has gone from conversational to almost demonic. He’s not rapping anymore – he’s proclaiming. And the proclamation is this: the darkness isn’t a bug in the system. It’s a feature. It’s eternal. It’s immortal.

“I live inside death, the beginning of ends. I am you, you are me, I am you, Ren.”

There it is. The thing every person with mental health struggles eventually has to confront: this isn’t something separate from you. This isn’t a demon you can exorcise. This is you. The darkness is part of the package. Learning to live with it means learning to live with yourself.

The Turn

But then something shifts.

“Hi Ren, I’ve been taking some time to be distant. I’ve been taking some time to be still. I’ve been taking some time to be by myself since my therapist told me I’m ill.”

The light voice comes back, but this time it’s different. It’s not fighting anymore. It’s explaining. It’s been doing the work. It’s been in therapy. It’s been learning.

“And I’ve been making some progress lately. And I’ve learnt some new coping skills.”

This is where the song moves from battle to something else. Not victory – there’s no victory here – but adaptation. Learning. Growth.

The Dance

And then Ren delivers the lines that changed how I heard the entire piece.

But before he does, he sings. Actually sings. Top of his lungs, full voice, no guitar:

“So cower at the man I’ve become, when I sing from the top of my lungs that I won’t retire, I’ll stand in your fire, inspire the weak to be strong.”

There’s defiance there, but it’s not the angry defiance of someone fighting a battle. It’s the quiet defiance of someone who’s decided to keep going anyway.

Then he stops. Puts down the guitar. Looks directly at the camera.

And speaks.

The Monologue

This is the bit you almost never see in songs. Pure vulnerability with no melody to hide behind.

“When I was 17 years old, I shouted out into an empty room, into a blank canvas, that I would defeat the forces of evil.”

He’s talking about Lyme disease. He’s talking about the autoimmunity, the illness, the psychosis that followed. He’s talking about being young and stupid and certain that willpower alone could fix everything.

“And for the next ten years of my life, I suffered the consequences.”

Ten years. That’s not a bad week or a rough patch. That’s a decade of your life spent in psychological and physical warfare with yourself.

“As I got older, I realised that there were no real winners and there were no real losers in physiological warfare. But there were victims and there were students.”

Victims and students. You can stay a victim, or you can learn. That’s the choice.

And then comes the most accurate description of recovery I’ve ever heard in any medium:

“It wasn’t David versus Goliath, it was a pendulum. Eternally swayin’ from the dark to the light. And the more intensely that the light shone, the darker the shadow it cast.”

That’s it. That’s the thing nobody tells you about getting better. It’s not a straight line. It’s not a battle you win. It’s a pendulum. Some days are bright. Some days are dark. And weirdly, sometimes the brightest days cast the darkest shadows – because you can finally see how far you fell, how much you lost, how much time passed while you were struggling just to breathe.

“It was never really a battle for me to win, it was an eternal dance.”

A battle demands hardness. Armor. Weapons. A scoreboard. A dance demands something else entirely: rhythm, flexibility, the ability to move with what you’d rather destroy.

“And like a dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got. The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps, the more I struggled. So I got older and I learned to relax. And I learned to soften and that dance got easier”

This is wisdom learned the brutal way. Through years of suffering, through illness, through psychosis, through all of it. The lesson is: stop fighting so hard. Stop demanding victory. Learn the steps. Move with it. Soften.

What Makes Us Human

And then the final reminder:

“It is this eternal dance that separates human beings from angels, from demons, from gods. And I must not forget, we must not forget, that we are human beings.”

Angels don’t wrestle with medication side effects. Demons don’t cry from relief when they have a good day. Gods don’t need therapy.

We do.

That’s what makes us human – not the perfection, not the victory, but the struggle itself. The fact that we keep dancing even when we don’t know the steps. The fact that we get back up even when the darkness tells us there’s no point.

The Lines That Stay With You

There are moments in Hi Ren that I come back to again and again.

“You gotta kill you if you wanna kill me.”

That’s the dark voice explaining the terms. You can’t get rid of this without getting rid of yourself. So you’d better learn to coexist.

“Some people know me as hope. Some people know me as the voice that you hear when you loosen the noose on the rope.”

The light voice revealing itself. Not as some abstract concept, but as the thing that keeps you alive when everything else is telling you to give up.

“I have stood in the flames that cremated my brain and I didn’t once flinch or shake.”

That’s not bravado. That’s testimony. That’s someone who survived something that should have destroyed them, and they’re still here to tell you about it.

Why This Matters

I’ve watched thousands of YouTube reactions to Hi Ren. Literally thousands. Reactors from every genre, every background, every musical tradition. And they all have the same moment – usually around the pendulum line, or the dance metaphor, or that final monologue – where you can see it hit them.

That moment of recognition. That moment of “oh shit, I know this feeling.”

That’s what art is supposed to do. Not make you feel good necessarily, but make you feel less alone. Make you realize that the thing you thought was unique to you, the thing you thought marked you as broken or wrong or damaged – other people know it too. Other people are dancing the same dance.

Hi Ren isn’t a perfect, tidy ending. It’s not a story about defeating your demons and living happily ever after. It’s motion – real, shaky, determined motion. It’s someone standing in front of a camera and saying “this is what it actually looks like to survive yourself.”

For me, this is the most important piece of art I’ve encountered in decades. Not because it’s the most technically impressive, though it is impressive. Not because it’s the most beautiful, though parts of it are genuinely beautiful.

Because it’s the most honest.

And in a world full of filtered perfection and carefully curated mental health awareness posts and songs that treat depression like a problem you can solve with the right attitude, honesty like this is fucking rare.