By Odeisel

The streets tell a million stories and men become legendary in the whispers of the survivors of bygone eras who look back in time with a smile that belies the danger they went through. We like to puff our chest out and tell war stories and diminish today in favor of a yesterday much rosier in our minds than reality. Jay-Z used to be the embodiment of those same streets, with Reasonable Doubt standing as his survivor’s story. Those days are long in the rearview but I’ll tell you what. This guy Uptown XO is bringing back that feeling with his spine-tingling track, “Flowers” which actually co-opts Jay’s “A Million And One Questions” (Mouths to feed till they put flowers on me.

The beat is comprised of a minimalist, piano-driven melodrama that provides the perfect mood music for this song.  The drums knock hard but are basic as hell by design.

XO runs through the DC hood lineage of DC, chronicling the ancestry of cats like Rayful Edmunds, Michael Fray, Wayne Perry and even the much hated Alpo. His delivery  belies an intimacy with the subject that makes his rhymes feel so authentic. And that’s before he inserts his own story and family members in the rhyme.

The flows, the references and the density and first personal narrative are hauntingly similar to early Jay, including a few vocal ticks and pauses.

“I did it for them Jays but I never saved for the rainy days (for precipitation we stacked chips…hardly) eviction it came, applying the hustle took the pain away.”

Lines like these will only catch the people whose ears are tuned in to that frequency. Just like Reasonable Doubt 17 years ago. My CD got Mr. Freeze on it. This is that real shit I haven’t heard in a while. Uptown XO just raised the bar on this street shit by taking it back. “Flowers.” Feel it.

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