The lead single, "Same Old Shit", strips away any pretense of glamour around the gangsta lifestyle and outlines the brutality, paranoia and violence at its core.

"Attack on Babylon" prophesies a judgment day for modern America in which the races will be called to war in armed combat, while the title track foresees the nation's fiery end in an apocalyptic fury enabling black people to finally achieve justice.

The producers managed to create an interesting musical backdrop for Ren's dark verses, operating completely independent of Dr. Dre's g-funk sound that was taking over the West Coast in ‘93.

The title of the album is a reference made to a speech by Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan called "The Shock of the Hour".

Ren's debut LP is uneven, but at least presents a lyrical vision when it's not spewing out familiar, tired, sexist cliches about women.

"[1] Entertainment Weekly magazine's James Bernard asserts that "On Shock of the Hour, Ren’s raps still sound as commanding as they did on Niggaz4Life, and the musical production is a pretty decent rendition of Dr. Dre’s patented slow, ominous gangsta funk".

[3] Jonathan Gold of Los Angeles Times noted "Shock of the Hour is a small, ugly masterpiece of gangsta rap" and went on to say "Ren’s deep-voiced, brutal rhyming is as menacing, as portentous of violence, as anything a horror-film director ever set up".