[2] Ryan Dombal of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "'Take Control' may be an ode to submission, but it hardly holds back.

"[3] Tom Breihan of The Village Voice named "Take Control" the fifth best single release of the fourth quarter of 2006, commenting on "how great Amerie's joyous chirp sounds over sharp, percussive old-school funk tracks.

Here, Cee-Lo laces her with spy-movie guitars and horn-stabs and a drum track that keeps building and building, adding on congas and handclaps and tambourines without ever disturbing the tense little groove at the song's center [...] and Amerie finally finds room for a bit of grit in her voice.

"[4] The Guardian's Alex Macpherson wrote that the track "twitches and jerks along a nagging Tom Zé sample, but it's a song with such a sparse arrangement that interest has to be sustained entirely by the voice, which Amerie does spectacularly, making it absolutely clear who is really cracking the whip".

[15] Directed by Scott Franklin, it takes inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blowup,[16] with some of the key scenes recreated in a contemporary setting.

The hair tossing and strut-strutting is the same here as it is in '1 Thing', just on location this time—in a car, a park, a house with a sexy man sleeping under rumpled sheet, etc.