Inspectah Deck — Manifesto

Inspectah Deck's fourth studio album, still far and distant from Wu-Tang. Look at the cover: Morpheus Inspectah Deck shows his moniker with the Wu-Tang symbol, but at the same time, he gives up the Wu-Tang. The production is provided by a dozen different producers, including Rebel INS himself, The Alchemist and Agallah, while only Raekwon & Cappadonna among the guys of the supergroup collaborate on the album, in addition to external guests Termanology, Planet Asia, Kurupt and Billy Danze, and Deck's friends Fes Taylor and Carlton Fisk.

J. Glaze, the major producer of the record, provides his first beat in the intro: dark, closed, and dreary boom bap, on which Deck provides confident bars. "The Champion" boasts a production by Alchemist, easily the only professional beatmaker on the entire album: sample of a line of KRS from "Mortal Thought", skeletal and dystopian tight bap boom, good delivery of the MC. From here on, the record is a grueling and disappointing swing of emotions, mostly negative. Cormega is the first guest of the tape, in "Born Survivor", over the rhythm of MoSS: bad alternative boom bap, Mega and Deck pull decent bars down, but the track is just decent. Piece number four is a mediocre choice made by Dtox. It follows "Luv Letter", where Rollie Fingers invents a love song with a soulful good production by the rapper himself, with Fes Taylor as a guest and Ms. Whitney on the hook.

Beatmaker Lee Bannon definitively kills the musical coherence of the disc and decrees an early end: dark boom bap, telephone trills looped in the background, hopping delivery of Deck. The Wu-Tang's MC makes two mediocre cuts, the first boasts a soul-rnb hook on tense and annoying jazzy production made by Inspectah Deck himself, while the second has a gloomy and jazzy rhythm well performed by Soundsmith Productions (aka Y- Not). As a big fan of both Inspectah Deck and Raekwon, "The Big Game" is the song that disappointed me the most: Mental Instruments horrible beat, easily an amateur, the track is meant for the club, and here Jason Hunter falls into autotune. Unbelievable. The delivery of the Wu-Tang Clan rappers is good, however, AC's autotune hook sounds very bad and ruins the whole song. J Glaze delivers a decent dark jazzy rhythm in the next interlude, then Inspectah Deck signs the next production, alongside Khino: "9th Chamber Part II" is the sequel to the song from his debut album, the boys make a dark and somber musical carpet, which is well suited to the technical and quick delivery of Deck.

Rollie Fingerz is also credited behind the keyboards for the following song, "Really Real", a posse with friends Carlton Fisk and Fes Taylor: good jazzy rhythm, Rebel INS delivers carefully and cleanly, the guys aren't wrong and they certainly sound better than most of the tracks here, however, the trivial hook ruins what may have been one of the rare good choices in this edition. Mike Cash is the guy credited with "Serious Rappin", boom bap rockin', where Deck juggles with Termanology and Planet Asia. The song is simply discreet but sounds like one of the best and most effortless of the edition. Flip is the name of the dude who made the following beat, jazzy, decent, hasty delivery of Deck, which continues to sound bad throughout the project. And the end is still painfully far away. J Glaze is the closest thing to a regular producer in this section of the record, and provides a soulful jazzy beat suited to Inspectah's fluid delivery style. "Gotta Bang" should be one of the many highlights of the record, instead Shorty throws down a decent boom bap pop, Kurupt and Billy Danze go strong with Deck, but something here doesn't completely convince me, it's not the banger I was expecting.

There follows another solo track by the rapper, on yet another generic jazzy soundscape on the record, here produced by K. Slack, then comes "Brothaz Respect": Cee the Architek pulls out clips from "King of New York" (1990) movie, then creates a dark jazzy beat, Cappadonna here's still at his worst, Fes Taylor looks like a legitimate Killa Bee by comparison, while Deck is bland, gray. MoSS realizes a dark jazzy and oriental rhythm for "5 Star G", in my notes I wrote "dope" next to Inspectah Deck for the first time since the beginning of the album, but at this point, I'm not really sure anymore and I'm afraid to listen to this LP again, especially after the memory is stuck on the positive vibes of the lead single from Inspectah Deck's latest album ("Can't Stay Away", from "Chamber No. 9", 2019). "The Neverending Story" is choice number twenty, the last one, Agallah produces a tearful jazzy boom bap — I don't know if for the goodness of the music, for the fact that the record is ending after an inhuman effort, or for the fact that the record is ending and the boy has once again deeply disappointed, he hasn't made a classic [album] and probably never will — while the delivery of the MC is good and there's a good hook of Pleasent.

Produced by Traffic Entertainment Group and Inspectah Deck's Urban Icon Records, the record gets inexplicable attention from the public, which leads it to enter the hip-hop record chart, as critics split: some insiders are contractually obliged to write that this CD is well-made, while guys with a keen ear don't take long to crush the product. That this is a flop is pretty obvious: 20 short songs, 66 minutes of listening, it's a very long LP, swollen and exhausting, clumsy and fat, lacking in grace, drunk, constantly skidding. The production is bad, grumpy, cheap and forgettable, Rebel INS himself is the author of the major number of rhythms, together with J Glaze, the others are more or less all amateurs: there's a bit of a generic and regular jazzy boom bap, but the guy is really uninspired on these beats, he's lazy, completely out of shape, almost lost, he sounds badly three quarters of the time. We may never have a Rebel INS record with an RZA beat again. Personally, I don't care about having it. But man, there are producers out there. Real producers. Good producers.

His lyricism is generic and mediocre, bad by his standards, bad by the standards of a dude who should be among the best lyricists on the circuit and who instead turns out to be one of the worst even within his own group. Cappadonna is a friend. Cappadonna is a great friend. He's amazing. Homies, this guy is a legend: to give the charge to his brother Inspectah Deck, here in evident difficulty, Don Cappachino provides a verse so mediocre that it even makes Fes Taylor stand out. In the remaining minutes, Rollie Fingerz trudges and flounders everywhere. Raekwon, Kurupt & Billy Danze offer some of the best performances of the project, the others range from the discreet to the generic, but the guests cannot drag the whole album, also because they cover a few tracks. On a regular solo album, the listener would usually want to hear the lead artist, but here it's pretty much the exact opposite: you're led to want, to ask, to expect other interpreters. More guests. On an Inspectah Deck album. Solo songs almost bother me. I don't hear them, I don't listen to them, they don't interest me, I hope they pass as quickly as possible, they're colorless, they don't tell me anything. Deck is strong as guest on other rappers' records, however, when he makes his records, he fails every time.

This perhaps hurts the most and disappoints most of all, because it clearly defines the unsuccessful path of his career, here he's finished, he can no longer go anywhere, he cannot go back up. He can't go back to the top: after a discreet debut and two decent albums, this ranks as his worst work by him, excluding his remix album which is one of the worst in the entire Wu-Tang discography and in the whole hip-hop season. In particular, he forces you to view his discography and compare it to that of the other MCs in the group: it's one of the weakest of the Wu-Tang Clan artists, one of the worst, and by far the most disappointing. In the period 1998-2004, it was the absolute worst catalog among the officers of the group, as Cappadonna (who wasn't yet part of the group) and Masta Killa had better debut records, although Cappachino would soon undermine his career on his own with some embarrassing releases. Fortunately, Jason Hunter's talent wasn't lacking and in the following years he abandoned his solo career, re-inventing himself under a different pseudonym and managing to build a new career as an MC from scratch, one of the most solid and consistent among Wu-Tang artists.

Rating: 4/10.