Concrete Kept the Receipts

Intro

Corner store light flickering, three a.m. code

Young Ledger, I been counting what the block owed

Every crack in the sidewalk got a story to hold

Concrete kept the receipts, now watch how it's told

Verse

Nine years old, cardboard flat for a mattress

Momma stretched a dollar till it turned into magic

Wrote my first sixteen on the back of a math test

Teacher said I'd fail, now her name's in my address book, tragic

Corner cats laughed when I skipped the block meetings

Said the booth don't pay like the block on repeating

I told 'em concrete remembers every step that you leave in

Every hustle got a echo, every silence got a meaning

Grinded through the winter with no coat, just conviction

Pawned my chain twice just to fund the addiction

To a dream that don't sleep, keeps me writing at midnight

Ledger by the name, but my life is the invoice

Every L that I took got recorded and filed

Every W stacked like a brick, mile by mile

Now the same block that doubted got my name on the tile

Concrete kept the receipts, and it's showing me smile

Chorus

Concrete kept the receipts, every step that I made

Every night that I bled just to see it repaid

I ain't lucky, I'm ledgered, every debt got replayed

Concrete kept the receipts, that's the price that I paid

Verse

Back when the studio was a closet with foam

Recorded with a hoodie so the neighbors wouldn't know

Momma banged on the door said "boy turn it low"

Now that same beat got the whole city on go

I remember pawnshops knowing me by my first name

Selling mixtapes out the trunk just to bird chase

Cousins said quit it, get a job, that's the smart way

I said watch the concrete, it don't forget a hard day

Every open mic where they ain't clap for the verse

Every empty room felt like a slow curse

But I kept my pen loaded like the block kept the hearse

Turned the pain into pages, made the worst into worth

Now the ledger balanced, every column adds right

Every debt from the dark got repaid in the light

I ain't chasing a check, I'm collecting what's mine

Concrete kept the receipts, every step, every grind

Chorus

Concrete kept the receipts, every step that I made

Every night that I bled just to see it repaid

I ain't lucky, I'm ledgered, every debt got replayed

Concrete kept the receipts, that's the price that I paid

Bridge

See the block don't lie, it just archives

Every dream you buried still survives

Ask the sidewalk where the hunger resides

It'll show you the tracks where the hustle applies

I ain't write this to flex, I wrote it to prove

That the grind got a memory, it move how you move

Every scar on my knuckle is a page I lived through

Concrete don't forget, and neither do I, that's the truth

Outro

Young Ledger, closing out the book tonight

Every column balanced, every column right

Concrete kept the receipts, kept the record straight

That's the story of a debt that made a man great