Marques Houston released “Naked” as the second single from his sophomore solo album of the same name in 2005. The song was produced by star production team The Underdogs and written by Tank who was just coming into his own as a writer (you can also hear him on background vocals). The video for the song featured a naked Marques Houston posing in a fashion that was similar to D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does it Feel)”. When we spoke to Harvey Mason Jr. last year in an interview, he discussed how “Naked” was created:
Harvey Mason: I think that was the third song we did for Marques’ record, we had done two already, and we really wanted to push him vocally, we didn’t think he had been showcasing what he could do singing wise in some of his past records. We had the idea of kinda taking him into a falsetto direction and showcasing that part of his voice. From there, we knew the general idea of the key, we came up with the track, I don’t remember whose concept it was, but we thought the “Naked” concept was original and a little bit racy and provocative enough for Marques to be able to pull it off. So we finished the lyrics, Marques loved it and delivered great vocals. For us on that one, it was all about trying to get great vocals; we had written the song specifically to showcase what we could do vocally and I think we pulled it off because I think that was one of the best songs he’s ever had.