RenzNiro No Weapon Shall Prosper Listening Party at Ormside Projects: Event Review
"We're in the pit end of the country, and it couldn't be any more beautiful." are the parting words of Rainy Miller at The White Hotel’s Blacklights Festival last month. A community cultivated over the past decade in an old MOT garage, just a stone's throw from Strangeways HMP, now finds itself beneath the grandeur of the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. Finding beauty amid the ugly has long been central to avant-garde culture, exemplified by institutions like The White Hotel. Rainy’s sentiment speaks for everybody involved, highlighting the enduring importance of community.
Despite the imminent closure of the venue later this year, the fruit of its labour lives on through artists like RenzNiro who premieres his latest project “NO WEAPON SHALL PROSPER” tonight at Ormside Projects. Nestled deep within a Bermondsey industrial estate, the venue feels like a sibling to Renz's usual stomping grounds, the perfect place to debut the album.
This Wythenshawe rapper and producer embodies the spirit of The White Hotel, adopting ambient, industrial and sophisticated orchestral arrangements as the desired palette for his storytelling. RenzNiro’s latest offering builds on the foundations laid by his previous tapes, “Laissez-Faire” and “10,000 Hours”, culminating in a fully realised fifteen-track project backed by one of the strongest supporting line-ups in recent memory. Intentionality feels like the perfect word to describe both the album and this event. Every musical and visual collaborator involved in the making of this project shares an unwavering desire to bring RenzNiro’s vision to life.
Upon entry, the second floor of the Afro-Caribbean food shop is engulfed in smoke, pierced only by the glow of carefully curated projections. They serve as a beacon through the haze, transforming the room into something suspended between installation and performance. The atmosphere recalls “Space Is the Place” (1974), in which Sun Ra plays Free Jazz so powerful and experimental it causes a meteorological event inside of a night club, flinging partygoers to the walls with the force of his compositions. While the reality is less literal, it pursues a similarly immersive relationship between sound and space.
With no real introduction, executive producer Wudini drops the needle on “2SELFISH”, setting the tone for the project, laden with semi-aggressive affirmations over a riot siren of a beat. introducing our protagonist beneath a veil of muddy Auto-Tuned vocals, a treatment absent from his previous work that immediately signals a shift in tonality.
"I can't be average, it's not appealing" breaks the fourth wall, laying bare the artist's ambitions for this release. As the project unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that this is not an empty declaration; this is a record committed to pushing beyond the familiar.
"No weapon formed against me shall prosper"—the verse from Isaiah 54:17—is more than just this project's title; it encapsulates the artist's entire mentality. A near-biblical hunger for success permeates every corner of the album, nowhere is that mindset clearer than in the opening lines of "2EARLY": "I wake up in the morning and I pray to the Lord like, 'Please forgive my sins, I'm 'bout to do anything to win.'"
The contemporary Manchester sound pioneered by Space Afrika and reimagined by Renzniro is placed within a broader geographical context through Collaborations with Klein, Amil Raja, Ceesho, and Prettyboyface. Though, references to Benchill, Wythenshawe and the Ghanaian rap duo R2Bees corroborate the Manc-centric nature of Renz’s artistry.
RenzNiro’s practice extends way beyond recorded music, from directing and shaping the aesthetic language of his music videos, to collaborating with Space Afrika on the short film “See My World: Manchester, Lagos & Me”. In an interview I conducted with the artist back in 2024, Renz reflected on composing the score for the film, describing how the experience informed his approach to composition. Those instincts are evident on the dreamlike, amorphous tracks "2000, GHANA" and "GUAVA", which break up the project's predominantly electronic-infused abstract grime with needed moments of atonality. Standout tracks “XYZ” and “NOTHING UNDER THE SUN IS NEW” are so delicately composed, layering Wudini’s trademark drone infused post-dubstep sound with dreamy vocals from Lenacha.
"PRAY4SOLACE" brings many of the album's central themes to a poignant, sombre conclusion; Acting as a moment of reflection. Snapping back into the room, fellow rapper and “Drunk Ethnographer” Xt1ana takes a seat on stage alongside Renzniro to discuss the release. Anecdotes surrounding the production of the project, including a wild goose chase around Manchester in pursuit of a stolen laptop, the determination to bring this album into the world makes this one incredibly special.
photos by @jasperbarrowcliffe
