The song, which features Mary J. Blige on the vocals, was produced by Polow da Don and reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart only behind Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around... Comes Around".

[1] During the recording of "Runaway Love", guitars and bass instruments were played by Mike Hartnett, and Jason Monroy and J.R. Rotem provided keyboards.

[1] Each of the three verses provides a fictional account of the troubles faced by a different runaway female preadolescent: nine-year-old Lisa, ten-year-old Nicole, and eleven-year-old Erika, all of whom end up running away to escape their individual problems.

The second plot involves lonely ten-year-old Nicole (played by Raquel Castro), who believes she is not beautiful, and thinks nobody likes her, and wonders why this is so.

The final tale involves eleven-year-old Erika (played by Keke Palmer), who is taking drugs such as ecstasy to escape pain.

In the music video, it is shown that as Erika contemplates going home, she imagines her mom yelling at and physically abusing her.

Ludacris originally wanted Spike Lee to direct the video,[2] but he was unavailable due to filming the motion picture Miracle at St. Anna.

[5][6] Writing for Allmusic, Marisa Brown noted that the subject of violence against women had already been addressed in previous conscious hip hop songs, calling it "a fairly normal underground hip-hop theme" but commented that it was "nice to see a new side to Luda".

Club noted "Runaway Love"'s "bleak ghetto-griot storytelling", calling it a "departure" from the songs he recorded earlier in his career: he went on to praise Ludacris' attempts to address an unfamiliar topic, stating that "the song's grim subject matter works against his innate exuberance, but it's refreshing to see a rap superstar challenging himself".

[6] In his review of Release Therapy for Stylus Magazine, Barry Schwartz praised Ludacris for confronting the song's theme with a "solemn resignation no Ludacris song has ever approached", and noted that this was accomplished without "compromising his steez", despite noting that "serious doesn't suit him" on the other introspective material featured on Release Therapy.