the Jackson family. Jimmy Jam was aware of Jackson's depression during the writing of the album, noticing how she would spontaneously cancel recording sessions and appear constantly troubled. Jackson discussed "Got 'til It's Gone" and The Velvet Rope album during an interview with Rolling Stone, saying: "Singing these songs has meant digging up pain that I buried a long time ago. It's been hard and sometimes confusing. But I've had to do it. I've been burying pain my whole life. It's like kicking dirt under the carpet. At some point there's so much dirt that you start to choke. Well, I've been choking. My therapy came in writing these songs. Then I had to find the courage to sing them or else suffer the consequences – a permanent case of the blues". The song's music video and promotional photos were the first glimpse of the new image Jackson developed for The Velvet Rope campaign, which combined elements from Gothic and African cultures and consisted of red hair, nasal and body piercings, and several tattoos. In an interview with Dotmusic, she commented how she was a fan of Joni Mitchell's work, and that she knew she wanted a rapper on this album, but didn't know who and on what song she could do that, until she found Q-Tip was the "perfect person" for "Got 'til It's Gone". She also described his voice as "mellow and laid-back like the vocal". "Got 'til It's Gone" was serviced to multiple airplay formats, including pop, urban, rhythmic, and adult contemporary/jazz, on September 2, 1997, as the lead single from The Velvet Rope. In the United Kingdom, Virgin released the song on September 22, 1997, as a CD single, a 12-inch vinyl single, and a cassette single. Composition and lyrical interpretation "Got 'til It's Gone" was written by Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, René Elizondo Jr., Q-Tip and Joni Mitchell, and features guest vocals from the latter artists. It contains a sample from Mitchell's 1970 song "Big Yellow Taxi". According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by EMI Music Publishing, the song is set in common time with a key of F major. Jackson's vocals range between G3 to C5. The song has a moderate tempo of 96 beats per minute. For "Got 'til It's Gone", Jackson opted for a less polished and more authentic alternative hip hop and trip hop-influenced sound. It also