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In 1977, 1978, and 1979, Gladys Knight & the Pips put a lot of effort into recording separately. Minus Knight, the Pips recorded two LPs as a trio (1977's At Last The Pips and 1978's Callin', both on Casablanca), while Knight provided her first two solo albums (1978's Miss Gladys Knight on Buddah/Arista and 1979's Gladys Knight on Columbia). But by 1980, the group itself was their top priority again. The R&B department at Columbia had very high hopes for this album, and they weren't disappointed. Both creatively and commercially, About Love was Gladys Knight & the Pips' most successful album since 1974's I Feel a Song. The people they can thank for the album's excellence are the husband and wife team of Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who wrote and produced all of the material.

Produced with the involvement of Nile Rodgers and approval from the estate of partner Bernard Edwards, this box set remasters and recirculates Chic's first three albums and the contemporaneous We Are Family, in essence a Chic LP fronted by labelmates Sister Sledge. Another disc compiles edits and mixes of Chic-headlined singles of the same era. During this period, the band surfaced and instantly reigned in clubs and on the Billboard dance chart, and with "Le Freak" and "Good Times," took their slick and funky disco-soul hybrid to the top of the Hot 100. The recordings created everlasting aftershocks throughout commercial and underground music, consequently making guitarist Rodgers, bassist Edwards, drummer Tony Thompson, and a team of vocalists led by Alfa Anderson and Luci Martin (with invaluable assistance from Luther Vandross) unwitting instigators of rap, dance-pop, and house music.