Looking to transition from the teen pop styles of her self-titled debut album (1999), Aguilera took creative control over Stripped, both musically and lyrically.

It was certified five times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipping over five million copies in the United States.

The lead single "Dirrty" was met with criticism and controversy due to its sexual music video but was an international hit on the charts.

Following the release of her self-titled debut album in 1999, Aguilera had achieved major success with four worldwide hits, including "Genie in a Bottle" and "What a Girl Wants".

[3] Following that, she continued to garner major success with "Lady Marmalade" (2001) – a cover of Labelle's song of the same title – which features Lil' Kim, Pink and Mýa.

[3] Despite the international success, Aguilera was unsatisfied with the music and image that her former manager Steve Kurtz, had created for her, having been marketed as a bubblegum pop singer because of the genre's financial lure.

[3] Aguilera also believed that the lyrics of Stripped were so personal, and her vocals "represent a rawer, more bare-bones approach as well, with less of the ostentatious riffing that has miffed critics in the past".

[3] On Stripped, Aguilera enlisted a wide range of songwriters and producers, including Alicia Keys, Scott Storch, and Linda Perry.

[13] The album's opening track "Stripped Intro" describes her musical changes as she sings: "Sorry that I speak my mind / Sorry don't do what I'm told".

[2] The follow-up "Can't Hold Us Down" featuring Lil' Kim is an R&B and hip hop song[2] which incorporates elements from dancehall toward its end.

The two next tracks, "Get Mine, Get Yours", an R&B song, and "Dirrty", a R&B-leaning hip hop anthem talks about the theme of sexual intercourse,[26][27][15][18] and have been described as "majestically filthy".

Promotion for Stripped started on October 28, when Aguilera appeared at a Chicago radio station B96's Halloween Bash and performed four songs from the album–"Dirrty", "Get Mine, Get Yours", "Beautiful" and "Impossible".

[15] Its accompanying music video, directed by David LaChapelle, was criticized due to its sexual content,[55] and sparked protests in Thailand.

[7] Rush-released following the commercial underperformance and controversy surrounding previous single "Dirrty", "Beautiful" received universal acclaim from music critics.

[58][60][62][63] Its music video, directed by Jonas Åkerlund, garnered critical acclaim from media outlets by touching on anorexia nervosa, homosexuality, bullying, self-esteem, and transgender issues.

It garnered mixed reviews from music critics,[14][19] and gained moderate success commercially, receiving a gold certification in Australia.

[72] Writing for BBC Music, Jacqueline Hodges said that the album "is as full-on bold and over the top as most of Christina's outfits ... much of this seems to be an exercise in stretching the vocal chords [sic] to weak backing tracks".

[15] In a negative review, The Village Voice criticized the album as a "nü-Mariah on mood stabilizers, extended with pseudo-pastiches of semi-popular songs".

[19] Q provided a two-out-of-five-stars rating and commented that "Sadly, bra-burning rhetoric and gospel warbling make poor substitutes for addictive songs".

[72] AllMusic's editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine also wrote a negative review, commenting that the album is "the sound of an artist who was given too much freedom too early and has no idea what to do with it", although later he changed his opinion, giving it a higher score (four stars out of five possible).

[12] Writing for The New York Times, Jon Pareles commented that Stripped "is a blast of excess that risks alienating Ms. Aguilera's old fans without luring new ones, and it's bursting with misguided energy".

[102] It became Aguilera's best-performing album in the country, spending 102 weeks within the top 100 of the chart,[102] and was certified seventh platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

[106] Throughout Europe, Stripped peaked within the top ten in several countries, including Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, and Switzerland.

[107][108] Stripped was certified triple platinum in Europe by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for shipping over three millions copies in the continent and was the bestselling pop album by a female artist of 2003.

[118] They noted that:Ultimately, Christina defining herself as Stripped was not an ode to her sexually empowered image, but representative of her peeling back layers and getting to the music and emotions that make up the vocal powerhouse as a human, including all her darkness, fears and insecurities.

[121] Sabrina Carpenter has also stated that after she heard the album, she "knew that [she] wanted to sing" and she began to see "songs as a part of what [she] could do to showcase and develop [her] own voice".

[125] Vice writer Sophie Wilkinson stated in a retrospective review, "Say what you like about the flailing 'Dirrty' dance routines it spawned, but Christina Aguilera's sophomore album Stripped still has merits beyond the cliché of a former teen star removing her saccharine casing to reveal her womanhood".

[127] HuffPost noted that with Stripped, Aguilera led the charge at the beginning of the 21st century in influencing and introducing the next generation feminist rhetoric into pop culture.

[129][130] Crack writer Emma Garland wrote that the album "is best measured by its cultural impact on those it was always intended for – a mass audience of young people who [...] had spent much of the late 90's and early 00's being patronised by an industry that served them dynamic but spiritually void bubblegum pop washed down with empowerment slogans from the Spice Girls".

[76] PopMatters editor Kimberley Hill named Stripped "one of 2002’s most intelligent and successful outings and among its most controversial, too", and praised the album for "tackling once-taboo subjects such as casual sex, infidelity, misogyny, feminism, and domestic violence".