At Electric Lady, he held improvisatory jam sessions with a live band featuring the trumpeter Leron Thomas, the drummer Steve McKie, and the pianist Robert Glasper, one of several former classmates the singer enlisted from New York's New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

With the assistance of a few select producers, such as Dr. Dre and Soulquarians member J Dilla, Bilal experimented with different recording techniques, longer free-form compositions, and arrangements drawn from jazz and the blues.

Bilal's varied falsetto vocal performances throughout the album include sensual and ecstatic expressions of romantic devotion and lovesickness, with lyrics reflecting a distaste for writing what he called "contrived love songs".

Interscope responded by shelving Love for Sale's commercial release indefinitely, which aroused suspicion and controversy among Internet communities and exacerbated the label's conflict with Bilal, ending in his dismissal.

The leaked album quickly enjoyed an underground popularity and online acclaim, inspiring the distressed singer to tour performing its songs and continue his career in more artistically daring directions.

"[1][nb 2] Bilal's concerts featured a backing band and dynamic that departed from contemporary R&B conventions and helped expand his fanbase, although Interscope wanted higher album sales from the singer.

[7][nb 4] Bilal pursued what he described as "a raw, bluesy feeling" for Love for Sale, inspired by the blues singer Howlin' Wolf's recordings, and used more live instrumentation than on 1st Born Second.

[17] He worked with several musicians for the first time, such as the hip hop producers Nottz and Denaun Porter, and enlisted former classmates from the New School, including Glasper and the trumpeter Leron Thomas, who had performed in Bilal's touring ensemble.

[7] An unadventurous musician up to that point, McKie felt encouraged to leave his comfort zone and experiment more while working with Bilal, who gave the band freedom to improvise in jam sessions.

[21] According to Rachel Swan of the East Bay Express, "he took a very considered approach in making the beats, creating layered melodies and chord voicings that sound as though he had a full band in the studio with him.

[29] Andres Reyes of Shook explains that "this wasn't your typical neo-soul or R&B album", finding Bilal and his band's performance emulative of Howlin' Wolf, the jazz fusion group Return to Forever, and the experimental rock musician Frank Zappa.

[34] According to Tom Hull, the "slack and disjointed rhythm" prevalent in contemporary neo-soul is exemplified on Love for Sale in radical form and without the genre's typically glossy production, particularly on songs like "Hollywood".

[9] While he sings in a falsetto register throughout the album, Daniel Cunningham of the Detroit Metro Times notes that he "can often suddenly change the timbre and pitch of his voice", in the manner of a woodwind instrument, and also take on "upbeat hip-hop undertones".

[45] According to Haithcoat, the song serves as "the equivalent of foreplay" as the singer declares his devotion to a lover in lyrics resembling "a letter (or text) dashed off after waking at 4:00 a.m. in a lovesick sweat".

[46] Less successful romances are detailed in "Get Out of My Hair", which addresses an unsuitable partner, and "Lord Don't Let It", in which a "playa" is heartbroken over having found and then lost the woman he feels destined to love.

He composed a string section with Leron Thomas in the style of jazz and opera, while having a friend from the New School's classical department record operatic vocals for the song, the result of which Bilal compared to the singer Jean Carn's collaborations with her pianist husband Doug.

[60] According to Elevado, the Blue Note was a five-night series featuring Common, Erykah Badu, and Musiq Soulchild among its nightly guests, with Bilal utilizing a jazz improvisation concept and processing his singing voice through different effects pedals.

[22] Although Gordon regards it as "one of the biggest mysteries in neo-soul history", Bilal believes the rumors to all be "the truth to a certain extent" and adds that he also considered people in his inner circle when initially assessing the leak.

[73] Ron Hart of Blurt attributes the leak to "an industry insider" and calls it a "career near-death experience" for the singer, while Bonafide Magazine's Alex Naghshineh says it rendered the album's title "tragically ironic".

[78] His live band during this period included Glasper, Conley "Tone" Whitfield on bass, and Chris "Daddy" Dave on drums; this line-up would accompany Bilal for his tenure on the singer Jill Scott's The Real Thing Tour (2008).

"[12] In the opinion of AllMusic biographer Andy Kellman, Bilal must have felt conflicted when performing the songs to "appreciative crowds who knew the material – off a technically unreleased album – inside out".

[80] As Portland Mercury journalist Jalylah Burrell chronicles, he performed in a "hyper-expressive" manner similarly to Prince and the Rolling Stones, creating a "delirium" in concert that was undercut by "his ostensible unhappiness and occasional erratic behavior"; in her opinion, "he didn't look like a man who enjoyed being on stage despite his deftness at it.

[81] Tamara P. Carter, a writer living in London at the time, had felt disillusioned with mainstream music from the U.S. and reluctantly attended Bilal's performance at the Jazz Café in July 2006 with her friends.

In her observations, the singer opened the show with a crooning wail resembling "a weeping willow in a summer's breeze", eventually morphing into "electric drum-cracking thunder" that channeled "the cries of his ancestors" or Hendrix's guitar (the Fender Stratocaster).

[82] Attending his January 2007 show at the Black Cat nightclub in Washington, D.C., Godfrey also observed the ardent fan support for his new songs and was especially impressed by the rendition of "Make Me Over", featuring a break in the bridge section that evoked the music of James Brown.

[76] While remaining obscure in the mainstream, Bilal developed a respected reputation among other artists and was pursued as a featured hook singer for their recordings in the years after the leak, when Love for Sale became what Lindsey describes as "a much-bootlegged favorite amongst R&B enthusiasts" and "the black-music equivalent of Fiona Apple's once-shelved (and also notoriously bootlegged) album Extraordinary Machine".

[87] Love for Sale's repute helped create buzz for Bilal's third album, Airtight's Revenge, released in 2010 by Plug Research, an independent record label that the singer was connected to through Sa-Ra's Shafiq Husayn.

[89] Bilal believes "the real revenge" was how Love for Sale had become such an "underground" triumph in spite of "the whole long, drawn-out standstill" with Interscope, comparing it to the myth of the phoenix rising.

[93] After the alt-R&B singers Frank Ocean and the Weeknd freely released their own albums online in 2011, The Music magazine's Cyclone Wehner credited Bilal with having "pioneered [this] very promotional strategy" through Love for Sale, "ironically".

[97] In 2011, they reunited for an outdoor concert performance in Los Angeles and were filmed by the multimedia artist Michael Sterling Eaton, who used the footage to create a music video for their original "Sorrow, Tears & Blood" recording.