Inspired by the American comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black, the visual features Fantasia playing various characters in their pursuit of love while incarcerated.
Frustrated with the amount of record label interference in the past, she described executives' plans to determine her sound and style as "prostituting the artist’s gift", and wanted to avoid such influences for the album.
[4] During the early stages of production for The Definition Of..., Fantasia posted several videos on her social media accounts of her recording sessions with Kelly.
Donnie Lylie provided additional music direction and played the guitar for the instrumental, while Steve Genewick handled the engineering for the string portion.
[4] Described as a "vintage-y soul ballad with jazz elements" by Kevin Apaza of Direct Lyrics,[5] "Sleeping with the One I Love" is composed in the key of D-sharp minor and has a tempo of 65 beats per minute.
[6] Singersroom's Elle Breezy wrote that the single was a "heavy blues tune", and represented how Fantasia "rock soul" sound would encompass various musical genres.
[7] AllMusic's Andy Kellman called the song "a spacious, retro-styled ballad",[8] and The Boombox's Amber McKynzie described it as "sultry ode to 60s soul".
[10] Elias Leight of Vogue felt that "Sleeping with the One I Love" was "one of the more unusual songs on radio at the moment" as it did not contain strong hip hop elements, and compared it to Shirley Bassey's music.
[5] According to Wanda J. Coppage of Music Times, the lyrics focus on "the story of a woman in search of love, but she seems to find it with the wrong type of men".
[16][17] RCA Records executives had initially chosen "When I Met You" (2016) to be the album's second single, but Fantasia had disagreed with the label's decision, preferring to release "Sleeping with the One I Love" instead.
[5][7] Amber McKynzie selected it as one of the album's top five tracks,[9] and Gerren Keith Gaynor wrote that it "t[ook] story telling to new height", calling the song "soul-stirring".
[13] Jay Cridlin listed "Sleeping with the One I Love" as one of the top 25 songs of 2016, writing that Fantasia "cuts loose on a confident and expansive chunk of retro soul".
[8] Sarah Grant of Rolling Stone felt that Kelly had helped Fantasia achieve her "rock soul" sound by "put[ting] her yowl to work on the excellent, chiseled single".
[22] Even though he wanted William Bell's 2016 song "The Three of Me" to win the award, Billboard's Carl Wilson wrote that "it’s too bad it’s at the expense of, among others, Fantasia’s terrific 'Sleeping With the One I Love'".
[27] Prior to the music video's release, Fantasia posted several images of herself in costume as three fictional women (Brenda, Pauletta and Rox) on her official Instagram account.
[28] Premiering directly after the BET Awards 2016 telecast on June 26, 2016,[12][29] the video features the women's struggles with love as they all pursue the attention of a prison guard.