Unfortunately it’s 100% true. He arrived a couple minutes after his mate, Joe Hughes, jumped from the Menai Bridge. He dedicated his first album, Freckled Angels to Joe & a couple songs have referenced him as well. 💜

That's what Ren posted about the song Ren: 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.

Ren said he got a call in the middle of the night that Joe was on the bridge. It was a 10 minute walk but he could run it in 5 minutes. Ren kept trying to call Joe and getting a busy signal but about 1/2 way it went to out of service. Ren was the 1st to the bridge, Joe was gone. He blames himself for being late but really he did everything he could. He was just too far away.

Just to add on what the man on the left said about Ren being late. He wasn't late in the since that there was a time Ren was supposed to be there. Joe was sending out goodbye call/messages (this was at like 3am). Ren rushed out the door and made it to the bridge minutes after Joe's last moments.... So, yes this is true. Joe was one of Ren's best friends. I think Joe is part of the reason Ren is here with us today. Ren saw what Joe's passing did to him and those around him and couldn't do that to his friends... The song with Ren and Chinchilla - "How To Be Me" was also a tribute to Joe. That entire song was written from Joe's perspective except the last last where Ren says "I miss you". I only tell you that info about the song because if you listen to the song it doesn't really tell you what or who it is about. You have to know the story to grasp the seriousness of the song. It's amazing you should listen! Live version only!!

He's shooting a new video for Money Game 3. He's donating money to the search and rescue service that searched for Joe as well as Joe's parents .

i can't even express how sad I am to have missed this reaction when it came out, Ren is SUCH an amazing artist I waited for 2 days in a chat for this premiere and when it finally premiered ren showed up and chatted with us a bit. He is by far one of the most humble artists out there. He actually went BACK and recorded the last poetry bit after the song was already finished right after an interview he did with another reactor that got him to talk about his friends suicide after he had not talked about it for a long time. Thank you for this reaction! ♡

Yes! I've been waiting to see you guys react to this! Ty for supporting REN

I'm sure a million other Ren fans will tell you that end bit is a story about Ren's friend Joe Hughes. You guys should check out either "How to be Me (live) - RenXChinchilla" or "Freckled Angels - Ren" for other songs that are tributes to Joe. I hope Ren realizes that the beauty he's been able to dig out of such tragedy will save countless people.

Great reaction as always guys. I think everybody else before me explained the situation but always appreciate your heartfelt and thorough reactions.❤😊🔥

Thank you for reacting to this song which truly is a masterpiece! My condolences to everyone who has lost someone to suicide ❤

The last bit is like a spoken word poem he really is a master of his craft

It hurts even more because his body is still missing. That lyric he said, your body is missing so we never got to wave to the hearse.... hits deep. Only he had ran faster like he said. To live with that guilt must be real fucking hard...

Thanx for your thoughtful reaction, guys. I agree, 10 for you guys, 10 for Ren. 😊

He did !!!!

always read the description under Ren's videos and check the pinned comments - he often answers the FAQ before the video even drops. its very helpful when the context is important :D

You gotta do FOR JOE and Freckled Angels so you get the complete tribute from Ren to his best friend Joe!

When ren posted about the release of this song he wrote a comment exai omg the whole story it really is heartbreaking but it's your friends that help you through the pain whilst also reminding you of the worst day of your life, I lost my best friend to illness though, not the same I know however my friend chose not to tell us how I'll he was so we had no idea until he had already passed only his family knew. The group of friends we once were will never be the same without him but we always get together when we can to honour his memory

This one meanders through the thoughts he went through as he contemplated suicide and then it switches to show what is left when someone carries it out. Those they leave behind are shrouded in pain, gult and even anger. He convinced himself he couldn’t do it after what his friend’s parents went through and obviously him too. I knew a guy who hung himself in his mother’s garage and she was the one that found him, I not a mental health expert but I am sure it was related to his father’s suicide a few yrs before him. His poor mother was devastated

First time listener/watcher. Great reaction guys!

Great reaction guys - thoughtful and respectful and it is appreciated. Liked & subscribed

Your right this is a really great song ,which unfortunately never be heard on radio . Great reaction ,

God this song breaks me. ❤

Rens childhood friend jumped off a bridge and Ren was just 5 mins too late to save him.

And here's (part of) the writeup that Ren shared before the premiere: "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 dialing, 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."

Ren has plenty of animated videos - everybody drops, heretic, what went wrong 2 and plenty more. Great reaction lads from 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

The moment that makes me go "ugh" is just ending the song with a single exasperated "fuck..."

Great breakdown and analysis

R.I.P. Joe Hughes. Childhood friendships are true love... wait a minute, just think how much time you spent with your best mate, how much you knew about each other, how you missed them when they were on vacation. Have you thought a little bit? Yes! See, it ain't gay, you were that close and I was right... wasn't I

Again. Class review fellas.

Even for hardened men who are yoused too incarceration i find this emotional boys!❤❤❤

If you read Ren's pinned comment on that music video, he explains the song

love this reaction

Ren created two more tributes tto hid friend Joe. Earlier he wrote and performed freckled angles and more recently I Forgot to be Me in a beautiful duet with Chinchilla .

great upload guys, thanks.

Ren is amazing...thanks guys

RIP Joe Hughes

🔥Congrats on 38k🔥

Startin to see so many reactors jump on Ren band wagon and you can tell them do t really get it. U boys defo do. Great reaction as always

I should have worn sunglasses too...

yeah dis is true.

Very insightful reaction. i'll be back!

Yest his is a song about one of Ren's friends who unfortunately took his own life, his body has never been found so Ren has never had closure , hence this song he was also the first on site.

The second part of the song was about one of his best friends, Joe Hughes, who sadly took his own life at age 19. He jumped off the Menai Bridge around 3.00 a.m. on 28th December 2010. Ren was running to the bridge to try to stop him but arrived about two minutes too late. He had already gone

❤❤❤

His friend Joe did jump of that Bridge and he was only a few minutes behind . His song freckled angels also talks about it.i like the reaction thanks

Listen to freckled angels album by Ren! It’s about his best pal Joe

Yes its something he went through

defimitly based on truth

Great reaction, RIP JOE.❤

His best mate Joe jumped from a bridge Ren was trying to get there and was too late, they never found the body.

I liked this, Tre TV. One constructive crit - the autofocus on your webcam was moving so much it was hard to watch your face. I liked the reaction though. Well done.

✌🏼

Ren was 5 minutes from saving his friend. His friend Joe had a girlfriend but they broke up and Joe told Ren sometimes "I'd like to walk into the ocean and never come back" or something to that effect. Ren wished him a merry Christmas but didn't dig deeper. Ren was called and told what Joe would do. Ren ran to the bridge he was calling and getting a busy signal (I sign that he was talking to someone) 5 minutes before he reached the bridge the phone went from busy dead & when he looked down from the bridge at the ocean he didn't see his friend struggling just the tranquility of the cold dark sea.

yo yo if you haven't done money game 1 and 2 already you gotta do them he doesn't hold back on the hierarchy in that 1

❤❤

Definately a 10.

Yes! Boys lets see wat u think of this one!!!!😢😊

Why doesn’t KZfaq let creators say the word suicide? Or sexual assault (rape)? Does it make sense to anyone else? I heard a woman use the word “grape” as in “I was graped.” Why?

❤

Do ren and chinchilla “how to be me” Edit: do the live version

Still going down the rabbit hole with you and hope you pick up "For Joe"

Posted by Ren Ren: 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.

100% true story. Check for a pinned comment on the video, i believe he gets into the story of his friend Joe.

His best friend at 19

❤😢😢😢❤

🫶

Classy reaction to a emotional song. Many thanks.

If you look in the comments of this song, Ren pinned the story of his friend, Joe.

His buddy joey

Ren has actually done songs that were poetry. Listen to "meaning" maybe

Honest question....how many Dihydrocodeine would it take with a bottle of red wine?

1st rate review!!!

you should listen to it in full 1st of all then break it down with your reactions just my 2c

Algorithm comment

R.I.P Joe 🥀

Yeah boys, great reaction. Catching bars all over- double meanings etc. Like the others have said, sadly, this is a true story. He's giving away earnings of this song to Joes family I believe

Should I Drop out of Highschool to become the greatest artist alive❓ 🤷‍♂️⚕🎙💞

The genius thing about this is that he used newly developed text to video A.I but it is still considered 'broke' because it is yet to be consistent in it's rendering of images. Ren has took this flaw and creatively used it to express the fractured unstable feeling of losing a grip on reality. This is a Japanese philosophy called Kintsugi.

❤❤❤

❤