NEWS:Inspectah Deck Talks Production Style, Being A "Street Journalist"

Having produced one-fourth of his latest album, March's Manifesto, Wu-Tang Clan's Inspectah Deck spoke with HipHopDX earlier this year about his production style. With credits dating back well over a decade on albums from GZA, Method Man and Ghostface Killah - among other Wu brethren, the Rebel INS is not new to the craft. However, the man taught by observing RZA at the boards during latenight studio sessions and Clan tours does assert that he wants more credit for being a double-threat.

After struggling to clear a Sade sample for his production on 1997's "Visionz" from the multi-platinum Wu-Tang Forever, Deck says that he's learning instruments instead of sampling instrumentals. "I got into the art of producing without the samples now. That takes piano lessons and all that. [In previous years], I wasn't really fully confident in my skills," admitted INS. "When you hear the Just Blazes out there, the Alchemists, the Havocs and the Pete Rocks and everybody that's out there bangin' 'em like that, I was like, 'Damn. I still need a little more practice.' Dudes kept tellin' me, 'Nah, son. You ready. You ready.'"

With that effort, Deck was asked to describe his sound. "I think my style is more or less, the Rap Curtis [Mayfield], the Rap Isaac [Hayes]," said the man who admitted that both late Soul icons were played frequently in his home as a child. "I love them strings, them basses, them Soul notes, while I try to give 'em them Hip Hop drums. I take [the listen] to Blaxploitation Rap without the sideburns and the bell-bottoms. It's like a flashback to if you was in Harlem in the '70s," he said with a laugh.

Quickly moving from beats to rhymes, Inspectah Deck revealed that his whole musical style was built on a common-man approach. "I'm a street journalist, man. I'm not the most gangsta or the richest dude out there. I'm nothin'; I'm not the flyest dude out there. I'm just one of the many, if anything. I'm not the man, I'm just one of the men."

Talking about his March album, Inspectah Deck believes that the Traffic Entertainment release is greater when treated of a sum of parts. "I would for a nigga to buy [Manifesto] and get on one of the longest highways, wherever you live at. If you're in [Detroit], drive from the D to [Chicago]," Deck said, laughing. "If you're in [Washington] DC, son, drive to Baltimore. Go from Baltimore to New York or something, and just let this one rock. I guarantee you, it'll [impress you]."






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