Written by band members Gwen Stefani, Tony Kanal and Tom Dumont, "Hey Baby" was released as the album's lead single on October 29, 2001, by Interscope Records.

An accompanying music video features scenes that mimic the parties No Doubt attending while recording the parent album in Jamaica.

[1] They experimented with ray gun-like electronic effects and sounds that guitarist Tom Dumont compared to Star Wars music.

While the band was working on the album in Kingston, Jamaica, during March 2001, producers Sly and Robbie left the percussion and Gwen Stefani's original vocal.

[4] Like the song's dancehall style, the lyrics depict the band's post-show parties from touring in support of their fourth studio album Return of Saturn (2000).

[5] The song also touches on Rock Steady's overall theme of Stefani's impatience in her long-distance relationship with then-boyfriend Gavin Rossdale (whom she eventually married in 2002), as she sits "sipping on chamomile/watching boys and girls and their sex appeal".

[9] As a result, the band needed four keyboard rigs to recreate the track's sound for live performances,[10] including a Roland AX-1 and an E-mu Proteus 2000.

"[13] Colleen Delaney of Stylus Magazine was unimpressed by the lyrics' double entendres and noted that the toast and "deep, booming production save this song from being thin" but that it remained "inane and unengaging".

[14] Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine found the song a return to the band's roots, and that it finds No Doubt "sunnier (and tighter) than ever" as a result.

[9] About.com ranked the song number three in a list of the top five singles from Stefani's career, with the band and as a solo artist, for her "simultaneously sounding like she understands the hippest of contemporary pop (the Bounty Killer guest rap doesn't hurt) while having the wisdom of an adult several years out of high school.

AllMusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine viewed the toast as a mistake,[17] and Blender's Rupert Howe found the foray into dancehall misguided, leaving Bounty Killer sounding bored.

[20] In the BBC review of The Singles 1992-2003, Ruth Mitchell wrote that the chorus was addictive and chiming and that the song had a "catchy dancehall groove".

[21] "Hey Baby" was chosen as the lead single from Rock Steady to represent the band's more "upbeat and confident" attitude for the album.

Kanal has his picture taken with several women, paying for it by taking money that drummer Adrian Young earns by hanging from gymnastics rings naked.

Dumont defeats a woman, portrayed by Sonya Eddy, in an endurance drinking game, and Stefani dances, eventually joining Bounty Killer on stage.

Young's scene was based on an actual event, where he won US$200 on a dare to hang upside down and naked on the rings at a club in New York City.