In the summertime on the street where I grew up   There were black guys and white boys and Mexicans   And we'd love to make a football game, lightpost-to-lightpost   "Here comes another car, get out of the way again"   We'd never miss a day, and hardly missed a night   Of talking 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 with the homeboys      I used to walk to high school every day with Jerry G.   We had sort of a connection I think   He taught me how to write on the wall   I taught him how to play chess   Some kind of strange urban link   We'd never missed a day of those twenty-minute talks   Till a fifteen-year-old drive-by shooter took him off our block      Hang your head and hide your eyes   Watch a thousand cars go by with homeboys   We learned of loss that day   Everybody knew that things had changed for the homeboys      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