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"Imagination" was written and produced by Jermaine Dupri and protégé Manuel Seal. The song is built around a sample of "I Want You Back" (1969) by American band the Jackson 5. Due to the inclusion of the sample, Motown's the Corporation team, consisting of Berry Gordy, Alphonzo Mizell, Freddie Perren, and Deke Richards, is also credited as songwriters. "Imagination" was among the last songs that Tamia recorded for her debut album. Commenting on its recording process, she elaborated: "When you work with Jermaine , you party on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Then you have like six hours left and then you have to go in the studio and work."
Music video
An accompanying music video for "Imagination" was directed by Paul Hunter. For the highly stylized clip which features circus stars such as fire blowers, Hunter referenced French playwright Jean Cocteau's classic film version of Beauty and the Beast (1946), resulting in a contrast in styles between the video and the song. In a 1998 interview with MTV News, Tamia elaborated that "I think the video really caught a lot of people's attention. Because it wasn't the same fish lens with a shiny gloss and glitter falling from the sky and I think people were like, 'OK, it sounds like a hip-hop song to me, but she has a Nine Inch Nails video, so what's up with that?'." In a retrospective 2018 article for Billboard, she commented that initially, she did not understand the concept of looking into the camera while filming. Feeling distracted by people walking around on set, the crew had to put a black screen by the camera for her. The video received a nomination in the Urban/R&B Video of the Year category at the 1999 Music Video Production Association Awards.
