 The song begins with drummer Questlove's off-beat, cross-snare clicks on the two and four beat with a messy kick. Music critic Steve McPherson noted that its first two measures sound "like a disaster", contrasting its solid groove. While most musical compositions rely on tension and release, which can be produced by factors such as soft verses and loud choruses, gradual buildup, sublte tension within verses or over the course of the bridge, or harmonic tension in chords that provides space for improvisation, D'Angelo's arrangements subdivide the tension into each moment of the song. According to McPherson, this results in "no linear way to measure how far off things slide before they pull themselves back ... can't be measured in beats or fractions of beats in a meaningful way. For lack of a less cliched word, it's entirely' feel '". Similar to most of the song's album, Voodoo, "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" has this syncopation style as its center. D 'Angelo's casual vocal style follows the same concept, applying it to melody, harmony, and phrasing, and is accompanied by falsetto climbs and skittery phrasing similar to Prince's singing.
