The album was preceded by the release of its lead single, "Love Never Felt So Good", which includes a newly recorded version featuring Justin Timberlake.

It reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, giving Jackson his first posthumous top ten and his first since "You Rock My World" in 2001.

[12] Jesse Johnson, former lead guitarist of the American band the Time worked on elements of a song that featured Mary J. Blige, Questlove, and D'Angelo.

[29][30] On May 4, the track "Chicago" became available to Music Unlimited subscribers, being followed by "Loving You", "A Place with No Name", "Slave to the Rhythm", and "Do You Know Where Your Children Are" in the succeeding days.

[33] A Pepper's ghost[4] illusion of Michael Jackson performed "Slave to the Rhythm" at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards on May 18, 2014.

[34] A day after the coverage, the "live" performance of "Slave to the Rhythm" was uploaded to Jackson's VEVO YouTube channel.

[35] "Slave to the Rhythm" debuted at number 45 on the Billboard charts and became Jackson's 50th Hot 100 hit despite not having been released as a single.

[47] Bernadette McNulty from The Daily Telegraph praised the album as "pristine", noting the "front-and-center presence of Jackson's voice in the mix".

[48] Michael Cragg from The Guardian said Xscape feels "like an album created to showcase a handful of Jackson songs that on the whole deserve to be heard".

[49] Richard Suchet from Sky News thought the album "sound[ed] more like modern-day remixes".

[38][45][46] Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic wrote that the album was "savvier" than Michael, writing that it "considers Jackson's legacy quite carefully, deciding to emphasize the splashy soul and diluted disco of Off the Wall over the triumphant Thriller or any of the calculated records that followed in its wake.

"[38] Joe Sweeney from Slant wrote that the album was "a carefully curated attempt to redeem the sins of the hastily cobbled-together Michael" that "comes close to succeeding".

Sweeny described the album as "remotely cohesive, touching on disco, R&B, and contemporary dance music over the course of eight songs whose origins span nearly three decades".

[45] Elysa Gardner of USA Today said that the producers on the album "ensure that Jackson's enduring strengths as a singer are represented, layering in modern electronic textures without overwhelming the distinctly slinky, shivery vocals or overall structure of the tunes.

"[52] Writing for Yahoo!, Nekesa Mumbi Moody described the album as a "mixed bag" that fell "below Jackson's standards.

"[53] Tim Jonz from The Guardian felt that Xscape had an "inevitable lack of coherence as a set" but that it served "to remind you why Jackson was once pop's premier genius.

[54][55] Currently, sales of the album in the United Kingdom stand at 135,500 copies and has been certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry.