Intro
Corner store hum, streetlight buzzing slow
Nine of us raised where the concrete don't forget
Ledger with the pen, Sable with the flow
This the diploma that the schoolyard never let
Verse
Eleven years old, split a coat four ways
Frostbite winter, cardboard box for a mattress pad
Marcus held the door when the landlord came to raze
Now he hold my name up like it's all he ever had
Taught me how to count on hands before I counted cash
Taught me how to duck when the sirens start to wail
Kept the same six numbers saved under "Fam" in my flash
Phone been through three cracks but the contacts never fail
Rooftop, summer nights, we split a single peach
Juice running down wrists, laughing till the cops rolled by
Nobody snitched when the window got in reach
Nobody left when the tide got waist high
This the curriculum they don't teach in that classroom
Loyalty's a language that you learn in the alley
Graduated hard knocks in a borrowed church-shoe costume
Valedictorian of a block they call the valley
Hook
We got a concrete diploma, hung it up with pride
Wrote in blood and sidewalk chalk, can't erase what's inside
Rode for each other when the whole world walked away
This the concrete diploma, that's why we stay
Verse
Denny took a charge that wasn't his to hold
Eighteen months upstate, wrote me letters every week
Said the block still breathing, said the story still gets told
Said stay solid, stay standing, stay humble not weak
I sent commissary money folded in a magazine
Visited on Sundays with my mama's rosary beads
He came home lighter but his eyes still had that sheen
Planted him a garden where the old crew used to bleed
Now we got a bakery two blocks from the church
Ledger doing books, Sable spitting on the mic
Kept the same five faces through the drought and through the search
Never let the money turn a brother into ice
This the kind of debt that don't show up on a paper
Paid in loyalty, in casseroles, in late-night calls
Every scar's a signature, every block a chapter
Every name I mentioned still the reason that I stand tall
Hook
We got a concrete diploma, hung it up with pride
Wrote in blood and sidewalk chalk, can't erase what's inside
Rode for each other when the whole world walked away
This the concrete diploma, that's why we stay
Bridge
Some of us in suits now, some of us still grinding
Some of us in heaven watching over how we're climbing
Don't matter what the zip code, don't matter what the sky is
The circle never broke, the circle just got wiser
Outro
Corner store still humming, streetlight still on time
Ledger closed the books, Sable closed the rhyme
We ain't need the paper, we ain't need the frame
Concrete wrote our names, and the concrete kept the same
