He wrote and recorded Airtight's Revenge during a period of approximately three years, working alongside the musician-producers Steve McKie, Nottz, Shafiq Husayn, Conley "Tone" Whitfield, and 88-Keys.

Experiences from his personal life and professional conflicts with his former label, Interscope Records, formed the inspiration for the album's dark songwriting, which explores themes of love, spirituality, capitalism, and politics, with lyrics informed by free thought.

[5] While touring in response to the popularity of Love for Sale, his controversially shelved but leaked album, Bilal began composing new music on his computer using the digital audio workstation GarageBand.

[4] He drew inspiration from his personal experiences, as well as "a lot of things from fiction" in an effort to "make certain statements, from a love standpoint", he explains.

[4] Bilal adds that his experience with Love for Sale and the ensuing conflict with his then-record label Interscope led him to the "dark underworld" storytelling of Airtight's Revenge.

[5] In contrast to his previous albums, Bilal pursued a more guitar-led direction based in rock and soul, with influences from jazz, blues, and electronic music.

He utilized ideas from the music of Frank Zappa, who he says "was dope at that; mixing a lot different artists in a band to create one distinct sound".

[8] A drummer-producer who had recorded with the singer on Love for Sale, McKie was eager to work on Airtight's Revenge after listening to Bilal's preliminary compositions on GarageBand.

[18] Bilal's brand [of soul] is utterly contemporary, meaning it's a mix of everything that's come before while adding a raft of futuristic sonic touches.

Club later named it among "a line of revelatory, late-period neo-soul albums", including Maxwell's BLACKsummers'night (2009), Erykah Badu's New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) (2010), and Frank Ocean's Channel Orange (2012).

[21] According to David Dacks of Exclaim!, "every second screams personal statement, from the weighty, heartfelt lyrics to Bilal's anguished, soulful vocals.

[24] "The Dollar" features oddly-timed percussion, subdued guitar and keys, strings, bluesy horns,[25] and lyrical themes concerning poverty and the pitfalls of capitalism.

[41] Reviewing for AllMusic, Andy Kellman called Airtight's Revenge "one heavy, messy, dynamite album — one that could take a decade to be fully processed".

[13] Los Angeles Times journalist Jeff Weiss noted its "formless floating funk" and praised Bilal as "ludicrously soulful and endearingly experimental", calling the album "a soothing anodyne to the often over-processed come-ons that pass for contemporary R&B".

[26] The Philadelphia Inquirer's A.D. Amorosi stated, "Bilal - the vocalist - opens the valves and bleats, glides, coos, and cajoles like Coltrane at his freest".

[36] Sputnikmusic's Nick Butler said that, "musically, there are dozens of neo-soul records in the past three or four years that reach far beyond the limits of most of Airtight's Revenge [...] but nobody is writing or delivering lyrics like this.

[42] In a year-end article on overlooked albums in 2010, Edna Gundersen of USA Today described Airtight's Revenge a "buried jewel that really deserved a wider audience", commenting that "It's personal, idiosyncratic, complex, dense, sophisticated and messy, a thoroughly contemporary soul record with a defiant indie-rock sensibility, which is why it never found a home on radio".