However, the album was unexpectedly and controversially rejected by the record company, which reportedly contributed to Chicago's later decision to leave their services entirely.

The next album, initially assumed to be called Chicago XXII, was conceived out of a desire to rediscover the band's personal, musical, and cultural roots, as an entity existing apart from its ultimately commercially marketed trappings.

The musical content of Stone of Sisyphus was reportedly developed in "complete secrecy" from the entire outside world including the record label, in order to emphasize the band's creative sovereignty.

Containing themes of early hip-hop and chants, it was inspired by the 1960s' precursors of rap music, as taken from the band's listening sessions of composer Robert Lamm's personal collection of old records by The Last Poets.

[6][7] As the subject matter of the title track's lyrics solidified, the album was renamed and then finally planned for release as Stone of Sisyphus in the United States on March 22, 1994.

However, the book The Greatest Music Never Sold states that within one month from the album's initial delivery to A&R, the entire project was suddenly and unilaterally rejected.

Regardless of the expected industry procedures, there was reportedly no strategic contact from the record company toward the band's management, and the label made no attempt at renegotiation, remixing, rerecording, or reassignment.

The band and its producer said this event had suddenly injected Warner Bros. with new management personnel who doubted the album's future sales performance against the company's requirements.

"[2][10] Producer Peter Wolf rebuked the record company's unforeseen abrupt edict as being "only about politics and greed ... nothing to do with the talent"[9] and that it was "purely a business decision".

[3]: 86 According to author Dan Leroy, "everyone involved" found it "devastating"; Wolf says he was "flabbergasted"; and Dawayne Bailey says, "[a] part of me died".

[12][13] The combination of the overarching philosophical and commercial divergence with Warner Bros., the band's new struggle to renegotiate its copyrights over its extensive classic catalog,[citation needed] and the fact that Sisyphus would have been the final album on the band's contract,[3]: 86  all culminated in a severance between Chicago and Warner Bros. in favor of Rhino Records and then ultimately in favor of independent publishing.

Later, the band's managerial failure to issue an official press release regarding the unreleased aftermath of Sisyphus and the subsequent departure of Bailey, left fans to years of rampant debate and conjecture.

[15] The title song and "Bigger Than Elvis" were first released in Canada on the 1995 double CD compilation Overtime (Astral Music).

A single edit of "Let's Take A Lifetime" debuted in Europe on the 1996 Arcade Records compilation called The Very Best Of Chicago (a title which would be reused in North America in 2002).

He declared that "anyone who remembers the invigorating sound of the original Chicago will find Stone of Sisyphus wholly comparable, if perhaps not its complete equal".

[13] Rick Nowlin of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave it a three and a half stars out of four, for "a take no prisoners funk groove ... pretty much throughout", and called the album "adventurous".

[17] During the production of the album, synthesizer maker Ensoniq created a Chicago-branded edition of its Signature Series of CD-ROM for use by professional audio engineers and musicians.

Intended for synthesizer users to create original music inspired by the sound of Chicago, the disc contains "various licks and articulations" which are represented to "sound exactly as it appears on record, using a combination of close and ambient microphones" from the horn section, Hammond B-3 keyboard, drum set, bass guitar, electric guitar, and vocals.

This consigned Sisyphus to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration, and thus it came to pass that pointless or interminable activities are sometimes described as Sisyphean.