Background

Shortly after Swain's previous album Where Is Danny? was re-released in 2011, Swain began to compose a satirical project to expose how listeners were more interested in music by high-profile names than in music of substance. Swain spent the remainder of 2011 assembling tracks intended for a digital download album to be released through Interscope.^[5] Swain left Interscope's digital label in late 2011 and was later picked up by Questlove's relaunched Okayplayer Records. Payback was largely ready by January 2012.^[6]

Release

Payback, narrated by Joi Gilliam, was revamped for release on September 25, 2012. All tracks were produced by Swain.

One week prior to the album's release, Swain performed "Evil" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon with the Roots as his backing band.

Reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[7]
Consequence of Sound	[8]
DJ Booth	[9]
HipHopDX	[10]
No Ripcord	[11]
Popmatters	[12]
RapReviews	[13]
Rolling Stone	[14]
Slant Magazine	[15]
SPIN	[16]

Payback initially received mostly favorable reviews after being delivered to the press at the top of 2012, ultimately earning a 76% rating from review aggregator Metacritic^[17] leading up to its eventual fall release. Noting the album's scarcity and constant delays at the time, Popmatters praised Swain's candor as well as the cultural references scattered throughout the album, wondering "how much of the album’s more subversive elements could slip between the cracks at a time when the market behaves as though there’s simply no time or need for inspective ears".^[18]

The production on the album was unanimously acclaimed by critics; Slant Magazine deemed the beats "undeniably savvy".^[19] Sites such as AllMusic and DJ Booth lauded Swain's emotional purging throughout the record, with both likening Payback to an on-wax "catharsis", while others such as Rolling Stone and No Ripcord chided him for the very same thing, calling Swain "angry"^[20] on an album "[full] of gripes".^[21] Swain would later debunk the latter sentiments on his Tumblr blog track by track, dismissing the presentation of such notions as "lazy".^[22] Swain recanted this stance on his subsequent album, The Book Of Daniel, acknowledging that Payback was "cartoonishly entitled" and conceived during a "very, very dark time in [his] life".