The song's lyrics discuss the narrator, a young man, who meets a woman named Renee while coming back from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The narrator promptly attempts to initiate a relationship. The song describes that Renee is studying to be a lawyer, while the narrator is a writer. The pair date for several weeks, but the relationship ends abruptly when she is shot to death by a burglar at a robbery.[1] The moral of the song is "ghetto love is the law that we live by," describing the inevitable suffering of tragedy by those raised in crime-ridden areas.[2][3]