Ren - Kujo Beatdown (Initial Thoughts)

9pm was a little late for me last night to get to this song, I was exhausted. I'm not at a 100% now, either, it's 6:17am rn and I'm drinking my morning coffee... But anyway, I need to get to this song at some point!

For context for the people from the future who don't know what this song is about, (over-)explained as simple as I possibly can: Kujo is a hiphop producer, he makes beats and rappers buy his beats to use in their songs. Beats are the intrumental parts of hiphop songs. Ren bought a beat from him, with an unlimited licence, and used it in his song Sick Boi. One of the sounds Kujo used when making a beat was a sample of a choir singing. If you want to use samples in your beats, you have to "clear" them = get a permission from the original source of the sample, usually by paying them a certain amount of money. So, in this case, Kujo should have gotten the permission from the choir. He did not do that, he used the sample without a permission from the choir. The choir found out about this and sued him. He, for some god-forsaken reason, wanted to blame it all on Ren and took his song (Sick Boi) down, claiming Ren is in the fault for using the beat where a part of it is stolen, when he's the one who used the stolen sample.

It's like building a bike from scratch, buying all the pieces, but then missing one piece and stealing it from someone else's bike to finish yours, and then selling the bike you built. (Not a perfect analogy, because with samples, the original does not disappear and also, other people can buy the beat as well.) And then, when the stolen bike part's owner gets mad at you for stealing the part, you blame the person who bought the bike, because they're the one who now has the stolen bike part. But you're the one who stole it.

There's not much Ren can do, though, since the product is in fact stolen and he can't use it... He's going to remake the song, but also took out his anger on this diss track.

The song & video

Fuck yes!! 🔥

This song's great.

As a metalhead, I just... yes. I mean, it's a hiphop song, there's no metal, but this is the... the idea behind metal lyricism as well, like, 90% of the time. A nice and good person has had ENOUGH, and instead of resulting to violence irl, they write a song about the anger and the aggressive thoughts they have on the situation.

And the song is not just a great diss track, it's a great song!

Lyrics speak for themselves, I don't feel a need to break down anything. Except that, yes, Kujo's gf was also involved in this. Double-faced sons of bitches, both of them...

I feel like I'm the same as Ren in the sense that I'm generally speaking a very nice person. I've maybe grown a little bitter and more sassier in the past 5-10 years than what I was before that, tho. I used to be VERY nice and let people walk all over me. I don't allow that to happen anymore. I'm also very straight-forward with telling people if I like them or not. I don't see why people are so... timid, about expressing how they feel. Sure, like, trust your gut and your brain as well - if you feel like the other person would take advantage of you liking them or mistake that for weakness, maybe don't tell them you like them, but... In general. Learn to like people for who they are and not expecting them to like you back, and if you have something positive to say, say it out loud. Put more positive into the world than negative and the overall effect you've had on the world has been positive.

But also, don't let people treat you like crap. If you don't like how they talk to you, speak up. If you don't like their personality, avoid them, they don't deserve your attention and presense. Know your own worth, as well as others'.

I can think of at least two examples from my recent online interactions where I didn't live as I preach, tho, gotta admit. There's a guy and I don't like how he talks to me sometimes. I should tell him to stop, but I haven't yet. On the other example I get myself, tho. It was another guy and he said something, that triggered certain negative memories in my brain, but he didn't mean to be mean, he meant it as a compliment and was just goofing around... It's hard explaining these without telling the details, but I don't want to talk about them behind their back, plus this post is getting way off topic and turning into a diary entry and I should probably stop typing.