Nina Simone once said that it was an artists duty for their work to fearlessly reflect their life circumstances.

In 2016 I had a stem cell transplant that saved my life, this video was taken two year before that. After the transplant I decided to force my past into a little box and hide it from myself. I wouldn't ever watch this video back. There has always been a part of me that's terrified that I'll end up back here and loose myself again. That part of me always gets loudest when I'm on my own with my thoughts.

When I got better and my music started becoming successful after years of never thinking it would be possible I almost treated it as a reincarnation. I'd barley talk about where I'd come from with friends, but despite my best efforts my past usually found a way to leak into my music.

Here I was convinced I was going to die. I was severely underweight, I had severe bone pain every day, I could barley eat food, I suffered extreme fatigue to the point even standing in a shower was excruciating. I ended up in a state of stress induced psychosis, my minds only rational explanation for the level of suffering I was enduring was that it was some kind of demonic intervention or that i was part of some twisted experiment or study. This had been my life for years. I'd bounced from doctor to doctor full of hope only to have my heart repeatedly stamped on when my condition only worsened.

Cut to present day and PTSD from years of my body torturing itself stopped me from doing work that I think is vital. Shedding light on a very under-lit , underfunded, and barley understood area. The plight of the chronically sick. Millions of people all over the world are missing. Trapped inside themselves. Conditions like ME/CFS, ehlers danlos syndrome, POTS, MCAS, lyme disease, M.S. etc. Receive such little funding. To put the lack of funding into perspective, male pattern receives over one thousand times the funding than many of these chronic illnesses do combined. Recent studies found the quality of life of a person with chronic M.E. was significantly worse than someone with HIV or breast cancer. M.E. is currently one of the most underfunded disease at the national institute of health.

I was one of the exceptionally few very lucky people to escape before I died after receiving a stem cell transplant and finding a hugely restrictive diet that stopped my autoimmunity flaring to the point where it was disabling but I still suffer a wide array of symptoms every day.

To dive deeper into living up to the words of the late and great Nina Simone, who has for a long time been a great source of inspiration for me, I wanted my next piece of work to fearlessly stare my past in the face despite the trauma of doing so.

'Hi Ren' comes out on the 15th December at 7pm.

Turn on notifications here    • Ren - Hi Ren (Official Music Video)