"But when you get through this place, it's just a reception room - you hang your hat up, you pull your coat off in the lobby."

In the summertime, in the street where I grew up, there was black guys, and white boys, and Mexicans,
And we'd love to make a football team: light post to light post,
"Here comes another car" - get out of the way again,
But we never missed a day and we hardly missed a night,
We'd talk about each other's sisters under the streetlight.

Didn't care about the world,
Didn't matter about nobody but the homeboys,
The tiny and the strong, everybody knew that they belonged,
The homeboys.

Yeah.

I used to walk to high school every day with Jerry G. - we had sort of a connection I think,
As he taught me how to write on the wall and I taught him how to play chess,
Some kind of stranger but link,
We never missed a day and those twenty minute talks, 'til a fifteen year old drive-by shooter took him off above.

Hang your head and hide your eyes,
Watch a thousand cars go by with the homeboys,
We learned of loss that day, and everybody knew that things had changed for the homeboys.

Homeboys.

Come on.

Didn't care about the world,
Didn't matter about nobody but the homeboys,
The tiny and the strong, everybody knows that they belong with the homeboys.

Homeboys,
Go.