Payback (album)

Payback
Studio album by Danny!
Released	September 24, 2012 September 25, 2012 October 9, 2012
Genre	Hip hop
Length	79:51
Label	Okayplayer Records
Producer	Danny!
Danny! chronology
Where Is Danny? (2011) Payback (2012) The Book of Daniel (2016)

Payback is American rapper/producer Danny!'s seventh studio album, originally scheduled for a January 17 domestic release. Nicknamed "Project Lucky Seven" during its inception, Payback was recorded primarily during the summer of 2011 shortly after Where Is Danny?'s re-release via Interscope Records.^[1] After a quiet exodus from the label Danny! subsequently signed to a rebooted Okayplayer Records, which had been on hiatus since 2004; a release date was finally slated for September 25.^[2] Payback was notable not only for establishing Danny! into the mainstream—propelled by a promotional appearance on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon alongside The Roots the week prior to the record's release^[3]—but also for boasting an eclectic roster of featured artists; actress Amber Tamblyn, for example, makes a surprise cameo appearance during the epilogue of "Evil".

Overview

Background

Danny!'s previous record, Where Is Danny?, was noted for being highly experimental and eccentric in nature, merging genres by way of Turkish psychedelic rock, Big Band arrangements, bossa nova and library music. While a courageous and critically acclaimed effort, the album was nonetheless largely ignored by mainstream media, due mostly to Danny!'s perpetual lack of a proper record deal and publicity team at the time, but also likely to the abrupt shift in musical direction for Danny!. When Where Is Danny? was finally given a major label release on Interscope the momentum for the now two-year-old album had dissipated. The perceived apathy to a record he considered his "fully realized masterpiece" was Danny!'s tipping point with the industry; it was during this time he began excessively prank-calling fellow celebrities and going through a self-proclaimed "social media meltdown", alienating acts such as Childish Gambino and Busta Rhymes.^[4]

Shortly after Where Is Danny?'s re-release in 2011, Danny! began to compose what began as a vindictive satirical project to expose how much more interested in high-profile collaborations than music of substance that the industry was at the time. Danny! would spend the remainder of 2011 assembling a catalog of tracks originally intended for the Interscope digital download version^[5] of what would become Payback; most, though not all, of these tracks featured A-list artists that were unaware of Danny!'s contribution to a song. While it is uncertain which of these original songs were authorized and by what means they were acquired, it is believed that Danny! managed to compose an entire record of unwitting guest appearances according to a 2012 interview with Complex.^[6] Shortly after the interview's publication, Tyler, the Creator publicly denied any involvement in the creation of the album and is to date the only artist to do so.

Danny! would depart from Interscope's digital label in late 2011 and gain recognition from rapper JAY Z (revealed via Twitter by The Roots' Questlove), where he was later picked up by the latter's recently relaunched Okayplayer Records.

Release

Payback was later revamped for an official fall 2012 release, scrapping the original track listing that boasted features from Bruno Mars and Pharrell and encompassing elements and nuances throughout the record as homage to Timbaland and Missy Elliott collaborations from the late 1990s. For example, the drum pattern from "Go That-A-Way" emulates that which can be heard on Elliott's 1997 single "Beep Me 911", while the chirping cricket, drum programming and even ad-libs from Elliott herself from Aaliyah's "One In A Million" appear on "Far Away". All tracks were produced by Danny! himself and is considered the musical bridge between Where Is Danny? and Payback's successor, the experimental The Book Of Daniel.

Narrated by neo-soul relic Joi Gilliam, Payback's storyline of a criminal awaiting trial for breaking various laws in the name of survival serves as a thinly veiled extended metaphor for the series of events that led to his dissent with the music industry. The week prior to the album's release, Danny! performed "Evil" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon with The Roots as his backing band.

The original "all-star" version of Payback remains one of the most sought-after unreleased albums in recent history, owed largely in part to the means by which it was conceived as well as the relative obscurity of Danny! in comparison to his major-label counterparts at the time. In the spirit of adding more mystique to the album's legend, Danny! would later pull the retail version of Payback from online stores, making both versions extremely rare.

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 Danny!'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 Danny!'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 Danny! "angry"^[20] on an album "[full] of gripes".^[21] Danny! would later debunk the latter sentiments on his Tumblr blog track by track, dismissing the presentation of such notions as "lazy"^[22] on the writers' part while countering that the album's few emotional aspects were similar to, and influenced by, that of The Marshall Mathers LP. In a retracted review from Pitchfork, writer Josh Love refers to the original version of Payback as "[the] manufactured masterpiece of a madman...Danny!'s genius exploitation of the industry's unawareness of his existence allows him the playground with which to invite Bruno [Mars] and Tyler [the Creator] to the same sandbox."

Track listing

References