Sick Boi is a self-written and self-produced record that sees Gill "drawing from a lot of things that [he has] worked on over the years".

He personally described it as a "victory" over his health and viewed it as empowering to "pull something off like this", as he spent the previous year living in Canada to undergo medical treatment for his chronic diseases.

[3] In an interview with NPR, Gill revealed that the project was partially inspired by a "hyper-polarization" that is going on in the world according to him, leading to a "division" that hinders humans "to progress as a species".

[2] Sick Boi was critically well received, with Robert Christgau hailing Ren as "a rapper whose articulated singsong combines startling clarity with polysyllabic vernacularity" and unlike much of anything he had heard before.

In the end Sick Boi clocked up a sales total of 18,653, including 6,226 CDs, 2,036 LPs and 8,619 digital downloads, putting him 6,996 copies ahead of Astley, who debuted at number two.