Concrete Kept Score (Version 2)

Intro

Ashford Street, four in the morning

Same block, same faces, no warning

Verse

Corner of Ashford and Ninth, streetlight flickering slow

Five of us splitting one coat when the winter wind blow

Marcus held the block down when the sirens came through

Tay kept the ledger, wrote down what was owed and to who

We ain't have much but we had what mattered

Split a dollar meal seven ways, nobody scattered

Momma's rent short, we passed the hat round

Nobody asked why, we just put the cash down

Ten years deep, still got the same four faces

Different scars now, same handshakes, same places

Watched Reggie fall off, we ain't watch him alone

Drove him to meetings, made sure he made it home

This the loyalty concrete can't erase

Etched in the sidewalk like a name and a date

We ain't perfect, we just consistent and true

Concrete kept score, and it remembers what we been through

Chorus

Concrete kept score when the world kept quiet

Every crack in the block remembers who stayed by it

We built something real off nothing but trying

Concrete kept score and we ain't done climbing

Verse

Now the checks got bigger, but the code stayed the same

Still split it even, ain't nobody chasing fame

Bought Marcus a shop, he don't gotta grind for nothing

Tay run the numbers clean, no under-the-table something

Reggie two years clean, got a daughter now named June

Whole block packed the hallway when she came in that room

See, success tries to test you, tries to thin out the crowd

Tries to make you forget where the ladder was found

But I still ride the same block just to breathe the same air

Same barbershop chair, same old