According to the song's co-producer Edwin "Tony" Nicholas, "I Wanna Know" was originally intended for Joe's previous album All That I Am.

He removed the song from the final track listing due to taking issue with the label heads wanting to be involved in the creative process.

A few years later, he was asked to contribute a song to a soundtrack and claimed he didn't have anything to send to the record label.

The music video (directed by Bille Woodruff) starts out with a woman (played by Claudia Jordan) having an argument with her boyfriend in an alley off the street.

Joe and two of his friends see the ongoing argument and after the woman's boyfriend leaves he approaches her and talks to her, in the process of obtaining her phone number.