Love Vs. Money - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

Primarily an R&B album, Love vs. Money incorporates elements of electro and pop music, while its lyrics concern themes of love, sex, and money. The production incorporates elements such as broad synthesizer lines, punchy drumbeats, and computerized vocals. Its musical structure features the "stream-of-consciousness" song transition of The-Dream's debut album Love Hate. Alex Macpherson of The Quietus characterizes the album as "a palindromic song cycle of seduction, rejection, recrimination and ultimately – maybe – validation", writing that "as on Love/Hate, the tension between the character The-Dream likes to project – the cocky, preening, slightly lecherous lothario – and the reality of who he is – a slightly bug-eyed chump – proves fruitful." Macpherson views the album's centrepiece, its two title tracks, as a "stürm und drang" turning point for The-Dream's character, in which he mulls over a disastrous relationship. Jordan Sargent, critic for PopMatters, mused on The-Dream's approach to composition:

He doubled down on his signature formula of classicist R&B song structures and themes fused with production influenced as much by Southern rap as Prince. And with the album’s four-song centerpiece, fleshes out the album’s central conceit (the push/pull between love and money) with a jaw-droppingly operatic suite that blazes a trail from industrial beats to jazz pianos to beatboxing. It’s sandwiched in between sex jams that are both goofy and futuristic, adding up to an album equally suited for the bedroom, the car, and the stage.

The Washington Post's Allison Stewart writes that the album "cribs heavily from vintage R. Kelly in the same way its predecessor,... 'Love Hate', borrowed from 'Purple Rain'-era Prince". The track "Kelly's 12 Play" references R. Kelly's 1993 album 12 Play. Writer Piero Scaruffi views Love vs. Money as having more "melancholy ballads" than its predecessor. In an interview for DJBooth, The-Dream discussed his musical approach to the album, stating "This album's gonna be the same thing – a little more beefed up, I'm just gonna give you more. Every album I'm just gonna try to give you more of me, and what I think about certain things... This album is just gonna be the first album on some out of this world crack, basically". In an interview for The Village Voice, he discussed his use of melody, repetition, and hooks, relating it to child discipline, saying that "Americans are not the biggest listeners. I didn't listen, which is why my granddaddy beat me half the time. It's only when the belt is swinging at you in the same repetitive manner that you actually start to listen. So it's all about creating a belt on the song that repetitiously swings at you. It doesn't mean that in between the belt swinging, I'm not saying stuff that means something".