Many people wonder why Eric B. & Rakim only released one album on 4th & Broadway, Gonzalez explains that it was a contractual technicality.
"When we signed Eric & Ra from Zakia, our legal department was still kinda new to this. They thought that the agreement and option period started once we put "Eric B. Is President"/"My Melody" out on 4th & Broadway. The option period started once Zakia signed them, so we were behind from the beginning. We didn't want to get stuck with artists that cant produce more than one single, and artists don't wanna get stuck with a label that keeps them on the shelf until who knows when. We always did a two single, full album option with six months in between - after six months if we don't make a move you're free to go wherever. That period started once Zakia signed them, and by the time we noticed it other labels were already invested in trying to get them. MCA was the biggest bidder. There was no way that MCA was gonna let us outbid them, we couldn't compete with MCA and their money. We had to let them go.
"Paid In Full went gold and ten years later I was at Palace Records working on the Crucial Conflict project and I received a call from Pat Monico who used to do distribution at 4th & Broadway. Pat was now at Universal Records and he was looking for contact info for Eric & Rakim because the album finally went platinum".
Reflecting on the legacy of Paid In Full and its influence on Hip-Hop and music in general, Gonzalez shares that they had no idea that the album would have such cultural impact. "When I hear great artists like Nas say how big the album was to them, it's kind of surreal," he says. "We were just putting something together and doing what we had to do to meet a deadline."