Hilson and Ne-Yo knew each other from their days as co-songwriters. Hilson had appeared as Ne-Yo's love interest in the video for his song "Miss Independent," the second single taken from his 2008 album, "Year of the Gentleman". In a September 2008 interview with "Rap-Up" about a recent crop of songwriters becoming singers, Ne-Yo said "For one, I think Keri Hilson’s too freakin’ pretty to be in the background. For two, her voice is incredible—on top of the fact that she can write. So I think that she's definitely one that deserves the spotlight." Speaking about the album in the weeks running up to the album's release Hilson pointed out that it had always been a dream of hers to work with Ne-Yo and Kanye West but it was a complete coincidence that their vocals appeared on the same song. Kanye was given the opportunity to add his vocals at the last possible moment before the album was mastered and chose the song "Knock You Down" which went on to become Hilson's biggest hit as a solo artist. Of the collaboration between Ne-Yo and West, Hilson told Pete Lewis of "Blues & Soul" "While Ne-Yo is so used to playing up the gentleman side to him, at the same time Kanye is used to playing the villain who makes mistakes and talks about it! So to have both of them feature on that one song I felt was just ideal".