Sick Boi
2023 studio album by Ren
Sick Boi is the second studio album by Welsh artist Ren. It was released on 13 October 2023 through The Other Songs as his first studio album in nearly eight years, following Freckled Angels (2016).
Background
Sick Boi is a self-written and self-produced record that sees Gill "drawing from a lot of things that [he has] worked on over the years". He personally described it as a "victory" over his health and viewed it as empowering to "pull something off like this", as he spent the previous year living in Canada to undergo medical treatment for his chronic diseases. The album delves into the "agony of his struggles" and offers listeners a "perspective that most people don't have". Gill challenged himself to create a "hiphop only" record which came out as a "kaleidoscopic, genre-spanning effort" that focuses on his personal struggles, according to the rapper. In an interview with NPR, Gill revealed that the project was partially inspired by a "hyper-polarization" that is going on in the world according to him, leading to a "division" that hinders humans "to progress as a species". Talking to the Official Charts Company, Gill named "The Hunger" and "What You Want" as the oldest tracks on the record that he had sitting around "for a while". However, when he tied the record together, the songs "made sense".
Critical reception
Sick Boi was critically well received, with Robert Christgau hailing Ren as "a rapper whose articulated singsong combines startling clarity with polysyllabic vernacularity" and unlike much of anything he had heard before.
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