The Declaration

• "The Way That I Love You" was referred to as the real "first single" in press material and media reports.[2][3][4][5] It was released in February 2008 to Urban radio. It was released to digital retailers in March 2008 and to Rhythmic radio in April 2008. It reached number two on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and number thirty-seven on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Ashanti's first song to reach the top forty since "Only U" in 2004.
• "Good Good" was released to urban radio stations on July 16, 2008.[6] The song contains elements of Elton John's 1974 single "Bennie and the Jets", and has the same melody arrangement as Michael Jackson's "The Girl Is Mine".

Ashanti performed the song, "Shine", at the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as well as on FOX News in December. "Shine" was also played near the end in one of the televised previews for Will Smith's December 2008 movie, Seven Pounds.

The back insert for the physical CD release of the album has the runtimes misprinted, with some times being up to almost a minute under or over the song's actual run time.

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	52/100[9]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[10]
Daily News (New York)	[11]
Entertainment Weekly	C+[12]
Newsday	B[13]
Rolling Stone	[14]
Slant Magazine	[15]
This Is Music	[16]
Toronto Star	[17]
USA Today	[18]
Vibe	[9][19]

The Declaration received generally mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 52, based on 11 reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[9] Dan Gennoe of Yahoo! Music UK was impressed saying that the album may be "The best album of Ashanti's career", but that it may also be her most "overlooked".[20] Shanel Odum of Vibe gave a mixed review to the album, writing that "More than half of the album is lukewarm", but also felt that the title track is the album's "diamond in the rough".[19] Christian Hoard also had a mixed review to the album stating: "This season, while R&B fans spin albums by Mariah, Usher and Janet, Ashanti needs more pizazz to compete."[14]

The album debuted at number 6 on the Billboard 200, selling 86,000 copies its first week. [21] As of February 2014, the album had sold 297,000 copies in United States.[22]