[2] He contributed writing to multiple songs on 808s & Heartbreak, including "Love Lockdown", which was co-written by West, Esthero, Malik Yusef, and Starshell.

"[5] Inspired by 1980s synthpop icons such as Phil Collins, Gary Numan and Boy George for the material on 808s & Heartbreak, West considered the tracks to be more minimal and functional due to him making usage of the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

[10] The shared version was met with generally negative responses from fans of West, including an Underwriter blog critic that heavily appreciated his previous works.

[12][13][14] The cover art for the single features PostScript's Type 4 font, which West described as "perfected" to please all the "design snobs, lol".

[25] "Love Lockdown" is composed in the key of C♯ minor with a quick tempo of 120 beats per minute (BPM) and West's vocal range spans two octaves, going from a low of G♯2 to a high of G♯4.

[25] The song is written in a verse-chorus form that expresses quiet-loud dynamics, featuring verses delivered in a low, somber tone before shifting into loud, chanting choruses.

[19] For going against the typical sound of a hip hop beat, along with the Roland TR-808, the track instead makes use of "thundering" tribal taiko drums in its chorus' instrumentation that accompany West's vocals.

[22][30][21] The chorus also contains hand claps and heavy percussion, the latter of which was contributed by Gibi Zé Bruno, Lula Almeida, and Rodney Dassis.

[21] On September 18, 2008, "Love Lockdown" was released for digital download in various countries as the lead single from 808s & Heartbreak by West's record labels Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam.

[39] "Love Lockdown" was met with widely positive reviews from music critics, who generally praised the production and West's vocals.

In his review of the song for BBC, Fraser McAlpine glorified the "remarkable" production that "would still be great" if "literally" any contemporary music artist was put over it, and he highlighted the "frantic martial drumming".

[19] Comparing "Love Lockdown" to the version of the song West originally shared, Gareth Grundy of The Observer commented that the "synthesized vocal and shuffling drums" had been "quickly beefed up", which added "drama to what was previously a dirge".

[33] Writing for PopMatters, Dave Heaton analyzed the song as starting "with a heartbeat-like bass tone that manages to be melodic" despite not having a heavy presence and lauded West's vocals, noting that he "at one point goes into a brief robot scream".

[28] Chris Richards from The Washington Post said that the rhythm of the track "feels particularly vivid", with him opining that West's "scorned" performance alongside "a stampede of percussion" is "as thrilling as it is melancholy".

[20] The Sunday Times' Dan Cairns stated West shows "an emotional candour of such a personal nature" on the track that listening to it "can seem almost voyeuristic".

[40] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times wrote that the track's "thunderous drums cut through an electro haze", which he viewed as suggesting West's "old, oversize sound".

[41] Jody Rosen from Rolling Stone highlighted the track for being "powered by thundering tribal drums", while describing West's vocals as sliding "from digitized trills into strangled squeals".

[58] Filming Personnel On the US Billboard Hot 100, the song opened at number three for the issue date of September 29, 2008, with first-week digital sales of 213,000.

[60] The song became West's highest debuting single on the chart, surpassing his previous record of entering at number five with "Swagga Like Us" one week prior.

[71] On January 12, 2009, "Love Lockdown" was certified gold by Recorded Music NZ (RMNZ) in its 15th week on the chart for sales of over 7,500 units in the country.

[73] By February 16, 2009, the song had been certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for exceeding 35,000 shipped copies in Australia.

[8] The performance was noted for taking influence from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics and saw West singing a version of the song through Auto-Tune that featured a deep bassline, a simple piano riff used to emphasize his vocal melody, and a beat delivered for the chorus by a series of marching drummers.

[103][104] The performance started with a monolithic white background wall that went on to be turned into a two-story-high stairwell by "Broadway-like stagecraft", filled with numerous muscular African-American men who were stripped up to their waists.

[106] For the 2009 episodic expansion pack Lost and Damned of the action-adventure game Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), the song was one of the new tracks to be added to the fictional hip hop radio station The Beat 102.7.

[110] A mashup of the song with Metallica's "The Day That Never Comes" (2008) was used for the soundtrack of rhythm video game DJ Hero 2 (2010), with the track listing being revealed on September 22 of that year.

[111] The New York compilation album for annual promotional event the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was released in 2018, featuring "Love Lockdown".

[114] The song was covered by English post-punk band White Lies for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge segment on January 22, 2009.

[116] Glass Animals later performed the cover at other live sets throughout 2014 and also recorded a studio version, which premiered via the Billboard website on July 15.

[117] Explaining the cover version, the band's frontman Dave Bayley called the original "so well-written" and highlighted the "incredible" work West did for the song, though recalled that they "thought it could be cool to push it in a different direction".

[24][117] During New Zealand singer Lorde's concert in West's hometown of Chicago on March 27, 2018 for her Melodrama World Tour (2017–18), she performed an a cappella rendition of the song.