MEETING EVE

In August of 2019 I was working on a new project entitled S.I.N.S: Stories I Never Shared. This was my first time really speaking on just relationships in my music. It was something I’d always wanted to explore but didn’t want to be as vulnerable until now.

I was fresh out of a situation with someone and I was in a space where I didn’t want anything with anyone. I just wanted to stay behind the walls I had built and get lost in my work. So I was headstrong into finishing my most open body of work and pushing myself creatively. 

Around the time I was scheduling the shoot for the album cover, I saw someone I followed on Instagram post on to follow them on Twitter. So I did. Then a little while after I saw her share she wanted to do more work with artists and modeling in the city. So, I DM’d her and told her I was shooting an album cover and trailer and if she wanted to be involved. She happily accepted and I switched up the idea to fit her into the cover and shoot. 

This became the person I fell in love with. The person I shared the most time with ever with a human. The person I loved, and hurt, the most. 

E.D.E.N is the byproduct of that time we spent together.

Love is the biggest risk we can possibly take. To give and trust someone you’ve never known with the hopes they become the only thing you would ever want and need. Sometimes it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it works later. Sometimes it works on the first try. 

It is a beautiful fear. A lovely nightmare. Something to try and try and try, because what is life but infinite attempts at experiencing each other. 

- Gen

THE HOPE FOR EDEN

As someone who isn’t a fan of sharing my emotions outwardly, I had to enter an uncomfortable space throughout the process of creating this project. After the unfortunate breakup, I traveled for 6 months to give my space time to clear out and give myself time to live outside of what I had become accustomed to.

It wasn’t easy doing this, but I was able to live with some feelings I tried to bury. I was able to fully comprehend a lot of the pain and anger I had. E.D.E.N became my therapy before therapy.

I was in New Orleans August of 2020 when I recorded the first song of this project, this would come to be known as “Thank You'“. Being in new spaces without the person I had become familiar with and used to being around forced me to re-evaluate myself, and this was my accountability check.

When E.D.E.N began to become a bit more focused I didn’t plan for it to become this spilling of the soul that people connected with. I just wanted to process how I was feeling in a responsible and healthy way.

I remember being in therapy April of 2021, E.D.E.N had been completely finished in February and we were finishing the mastering for the EP. In one of my sessions my therapist told me I needed to “release everything I was holding on to.” I told her “I am, I just have to wait a few months.”

In September 2021 we released my most intimate and baring body of work.

RECEIVING PARADISE

I was nervous to release this. I was scared. I was letting down walls I had been building since I was 19. Tearing down trauma responses, giving people insight into the emotions I hid behind bottles of alcohol, forced smiles, and high tempo anthems I had been releasing for years. But now, I slowed down, I opened up and let the world feel my pain with me.

Genesis Renji looks at himself in the mirror and sees what is and isn’t his fault, but he manages to put those painful realizations into a cohesive story of what he had and then didn’t have.

- Ben Slowey, Breaking and Entering

E.D.E.N plays well straight through or on shuffle. It's a well-written story that ends on a perfect note. You know how Frank Ocean has had different "eras." If Genesis said this was the E.D.E.N era, and the next project sounded completely different, I wouldn't be mad, but I would find myself going back to this era over and over,

- Vince Scott, Zeal & Pristine

[…] it's powerfully messy and relatable, filled with regret, some resentment, and ultimately, grace …

Piet Levy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

2021 Radio Milwaukee Music Award Winner for Best Album Artwork