Includes the singles "Mass Appeal," "DWYCK" and "Code of the Streets" plus guest appearances by Group Home, Jeru The Damaja and Big Shug.
“With Hard to Earn, one of the things that I was going through sonically was, it was right around the time that Guru started doing Jazzmatazz, and we kept getting categorized as ‘jazz rap.’ Which is why Guru did Jazzmatazz, because we wanted to protect Gang Starr from being categorized like that, because we felt like we were a hip-hop group from day one...Being that Guru was getting aggravated with us being labeled like that, I said, ‘I’m gonna strip this album down,’ just to show that I could use things other than jazz samples. We both wanted to show that anything I use is going to be a hip-hop beat. We said we were going to make it as raw as possible, and less musical, on purpose, just to show we’re good on any track, together." - DJ Premier
