Though Gang Starr's four '90s albums represent one of East Coast rap's most consistently great runs, 1994's Hard to Earn is arguably the duo at their fullest flower, a defining document of boom bap full of hard-nosed boasts and hard-knocking beats. Producer DJ Premier was bristling somewhat from Gang Starr being saddled with the "jazz-rap" tag after three albums of smooth samplework and MC Guru's mellow, critically acclaimed Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1 side-hustle. So with the decade's third outing and their fourth overall, they delivered a minimal, deeply funky head-cracker, returning to the noise of Public Enemy with a slick groove all their own (though the walking bassline of "Mostly Tha Voice" shows they didn't abandon jazz cool altogether). This is DJ Premier at his absolute peak of influence and reach, emerging in the same year that would find his staccato pulse on Nas' Illmatic, The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die, Jeru the Damaja's The Sun Rises in the East and elsewhere. Befitting the grindmode title, Guru is in full offensive mode, taking out chumps, herbs, soft rappers, posers, suckers, rookies, snakes, people that don't pay dues and—on the breakout single "Mass Appeal"—sellouts. In his game-defining voice, Guru raps, "Just like the seashore I'm calm/ But wild, with my monotone style/Because I don't need gimmicks/Give me a fly beat and I'm all in it," laying down an ethos for the next 20 years of true-school underground rap. However, Hard to Earn's most lasting lyrical contribution may be the silly, slick, undeniable line "Lemonade is a popular drink and it still is" from the giddy Nice & Smooth collabo "Dwyck", a 1992 song so unstoppable it still warranted placement here.