Songfacts®:

• By the early 1990s, the hedonistic behavior of the Guns N' Roses members was breaking up the band. The group's original drummer, Stephen Adler, was fired because of his drug addiction on July 11, 1990. Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, a founding member, threw in the towel at the end of their European tour in 1991. Tension between original guitarist Slash and frontman Axl Rose led the Slash to quit the band officially in October 1996. Duff McKagan was the last of the Appetite For Destruction lineup to leave, resigning as bassist in August 1997.
  
  In 2016, Slash and McKagan returned to the fold for the Not in This Lifetime... Tour. This flat-out rocker is the second single following "ABSURD" to be released since the homecoming of Slash and Duff McKagan.
• Both "ABSURD" and "Hard Skool" are reworks of unreleased songs laid down by Guns N' Roses for the Chinese Democracy sessions. Recording for the album started in 1997, and after a string of notorious delays, it eventually arrived in 2008. "Hard Skool" was originally recorded under the title "Jackie Chan" in 1999-2000 but eventually omitted from that record.
• Going out on a limb, the lyrics could be Axl Rose speaking to his former bandmates.
  
  But you had to play it cool, had to do it your way
  Had to be a fool, had to throw it all away
  Too hard school and you thought you were here to stay
  If that were true, it wouldn't matter anyway
  
  By the mid-1990s, Rose wanted to expand the band's sound with industrial and electronic elements. Other members disagreed, causing a rift; when Slash left, he cited creative differences with Rose.
• The writing credits for the song list the entire band in the early Chinese Democracy era: Axl Rose, keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman, guitarists Robin Finck and Paul Tobias, bassist Tommy Stinson, and drummer Josh Freese.
  
  Axl Rose is the co-producer alongside Chinese Democracy co-producer Caram Costanzo.
• In 2006, a 20-second snippet of the song leaked as "Checkmate." Brief clips were later posted online and a full version leaked in August 2019. The partially reunited classic lineup of Guns N' Roses rehearsed the track during soundcheck at several concerts on the band's summer 2021 tour. They eventually released "Hard Skool" digitally on September 24, 2021, coinciding with the start of their 2021 fall North America tour.
• Guns N' Roses played "Hard Skool" live for the first time during their September 26, 2021 concert at Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, Maryland. "This is something about lower education," Axl Rose told the audience before debuted the song.