Songfacts®:

• In the context of this song, a "Redbone" is a light-skinned black woman. The song provoked some backlash with some critics accusing Benet of promoting favoritism of color amongst African-Americans on this song. "'Redbone Girl' was written with me talking about one experience I had with one particular girl who happened to be redboned," Benet told The Boombox. "And there's been some positive reaction and some negative reaction and I think there's been some interpretation that the song is basically saying that I prefer a particular shade of woman over the other, which could not be further from the truth [laughs]. I love all shades of women. I mean, I wrote a song called 'Chocolate Legs' about an experience I had with a dark-skinned sister a few years ago."
• The bluesy cut features a contribution from rapper Lil Wayne. Benet told The Boombox that the YMCMB boss was happy to oblige. "It was really one of those things where I reached out to his people like, 'Is this doable?' and I sent the track along with the request," Benet recalled, "The track was pretty much finished. I put my vocals down and everything was how it is.
  
  I sent it off like, 'I don't know if Wayne'll be into this, maybe he'll give it a listen and we can talk about the logistics,'" he continued. "'Am I gonna go there? Is he gonna come here? Is he just gonna lay the vocals down flat?' But their response was, 'Yeah. He heard it, he loved it,' and they sent it back with his vocals on it. I was like, 'OK, that's hot. I like it!'"