Concrete Kept the Receipts (Version 2) – Brooklyn Ledger

Intro

Yeah, block still remembers my name

Every crack in the sidewalk got a story to claim

Concrete kept the receipts

Verse

Third floor walk-up, radiator knock like a beat

Momma countin' quarters on the kitchen table, half discreet

I was ten with a notebook, rhymes in the margin

Watchin' dealers on the corner turn hope into bargain

Didn't want that life, wanted mic time and marquees

Slept with headphones on, dreamed in harmonies

Fourteen years old sellin' mixtapes out the schoolyard

Every no I collected made the yes hit that much harder

Seventeen, got jumped for a beat CD

Came back the next day, sold it right in front of he

That's the block law, you fall you get up quicker

Every scar on my knuckle got a verse, it's a sticker

Grandma said the concrete never lies, it just waits

Writes your name in the cement before you walk through the gates

So I walked, left a print they could never erase

Every hustle, every hour, stamped into the pavement, a face

Chorus

Concrete kept the receipts, every step that I made

Every night that I bled for a dream that don't fade

From the block to the booth, still I carry the weight

Concrete kept the receipts, I ain't erasin' a page

Verse

Twenty-two, studio session, forty dollar an hour

Splittin' beans out a can 'cause the rent had the power

Engineer said "one more take" like he owed me a favor

I gave him bars that could outlive a paper labor

Burned a hundred CDs, sold 'em out the trunk

Windshield fulla flyers, backseat fulla junk

But that junk was my future foldin' up in a bag

Every corner store clerk knew my hustle, no gag

Twenty-five, first show, fifty people packed tight

Felt like Madison Square under one bulb of light

Momma in the front row, tears on her collar

I told her hold tight, gonna turn this to dollars

Now the block got a mural, my face on the wall

Kids walk past pointin', "that's the one who stood tall"

I ain't forget the linoleum, the roaches, the cold

Concrete remembers, and concrete don't fold

Chorus

Concrete kept the receipts, every step that I made

Every night that I bled for a dream that don't fade

From the block to the booth, still I carry the weight

Concrete kept the receipts, I ain't erasin' a page

Bridge

They ask me how I made it out with my soul still clean

I tell 'em I never left, I just widened the scene

Same sidewalk, different shoes, but the ground remembers

Every winter I survived, every one of them Decembers

This ain't about the chain or the watch on my wrist

It's about the version of me that refused to not exist

Outro

Concrete kept the receipts, yeah, it's all on file

Every step, every setback, every hard-fought mile

Block still whisper my name when the wind pick up speed

I wrote my name in the pavement, that's the only deed I need