Lyrically, love is the album's predominant theme, while Q-Tip and Phife Dawg were noted for their "mature", "subtle" and "laid-back" rhymes.

[8] The Love Movement debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), on November 1, 1998, with shipments of 500,000 copies in the United States.

"[10] Dele Fadele of NME praised it for demonstrating "the continued survival of hip-hop as an artform", calling the album's songs "drug-free psychedelic experiences in which subsonic bass and weird-sounding beats play a large part.

"[11] Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield believed that the "mature, accomplished niceness" of the album "proves that the Tribe still have the skills — they're just short on thrills.

"[7] In a negative review, Tim Haslett of Spin wrote that the spontaneity that made The Low End Theory "so much fun" had been "replaced by a shiny patina and a flabby George Benson-esque seriousness, so that the record feels like it was conceived and executed around a major-label conference table.

"[13] In a review for AllMusic, critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that "there are plenty of pleasures to be had from careful listening" of the album, and despite its love concept, he felt that "the overall effect is quite similar" to Beats, Rhymes and Life.