Song Review-Old Street by Allen Poe featuring Emma Shaheen produced by Jaze Baqti

by Dan-O

I was always going to do a song highlight for Allen Poe’s mixtape Pocket Full of Ohms. My original thought was the song Gina which is a classic hit-on-the-hot-chick-she-turns-you-down song. It’s a lot of fun as Von Pea and Basement Up help to recall the old days of Roxanne, Roxanne when rappers dared to admit that women turn them down once and a while.

Old Street is a better fit. It’s a great singular representation of the thoughtful charm which defines Pocket Full of Ohms. If you ever get that mean voice in your head that says “I’ve heard these underground sparse beats before…” tell that voice that trap beats are all the same and somehow are all in the midst of getting less complex and more boring. At least this style of production doesn’t depreciate and the lyricism is top notch.

So many rappers have talked about the block and their relationship to it but it usually takes the form of the “I’ll never change” song. This starts off with “Bye friends I had here on this old street.” The whole song is dealing with growth, not just growing up but the maturation of career and goals. What do you leave behind? Poe is dead right when he says “life is a series of moving aways” and sometimes it’s physical, sometimes it’s internal. Sometimes the physical move from that old street can feel symbolic of your own movement through time and space. Emma Shaheen’s voice is so lightly applied to the song that it helps make the song feel like a conversation and not a statement.