Discovered by Wynton Marsalis who heard him perform at his high school, Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Hargrove recorded his first solo album in 1990, Diamond in the Rough, on Novus/RCA. He recorded four more with the label before signing with Verve, where he recorded several top-tier albums (including With the Tenors of Our Time with various tenor saxophonists and the Grammy Award-winning Habana with his Afro-Cuban band Crisol). In addition to critically acclaimed classic jazz albums, Hargrove also experimented with a contemporary jazz band, The RH Factor, which applies elements of hip-hop, funk, soul and gospel music into the rarefied jazz mix.

"Being a musician is a gift," says Hargrove, who is arguably the hardest working and most active musician in the jazz world - whether he's on tour with his quintet or RH Factor bands, regularly fronting his big band at the Jazz Gallery in New York, or doing guest appearances at concerts ranging from the May 2008 hip-hop-meets-jazz summit in Paris with legendary jazz bassist Ron Carter and French rapper MC Solaar to a June 2008 celebration of Hank Jones' 90th birthday at the JVC Jazz Festival in New York.

As for Earfood, his maiden voyage on Groovin'High/Emarcy, Hargrove says with pride, "I wanted to make music that lasts awhile, to make an album that people can enjoy for a lot longer than one month." He adds in his liners, "I hope the pleasure in listening to the results is commensurate with the pleasure we had during the process."