"I bomb atomically, Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses can't define how I be dropping these mockeries," rapped Inspectah Deck, kicking off his legendary verse on Wu-Tang Clan's "Triumph." To this day considered as one of rap's greatest crew cuts of all time, the man behind the oft-quoted bars took a moment to chop it up with Talib Kweli on "The People's Party," opening up about the track's behind-the-scenes history in the process.
"Your verse on 'Triumph' is arguably one of the best hip-hop verses written of all time," praises Talib. "For me personally, it's a masterclass in the internal rhyme scheme. It's a masterclass on how to write a verse." Following Kweli's lofty praise, Deck takes it back to those days before Wu-Tang Forever, when he first penned the bars to begin with.
"First of all, I appreciate that," begins Deck. "Masterclass, that's a nice term. It's funny because there are two situations with that. I did that on Tony Touch. Shout out to my brother Tony Toca. Toca's always been family with Wu...I called him up, cause I heard RZA making 'Triumph' one day. It's four in the morning and he's making the beat. I hear the drums and I hear the voices and I hear him playing around with the beat, and I'm like 'he up to that shit!' We had just came up from tour. Dudes was in the house, knocked out. Ghost was there, Meth was there. But RZA is up, and he's cooking. I sneak up on him, and I'm like, I hear that."
"So I'm writing, sitting next to him, putting pen to pad," he continues. "As I'm writing, I thought of the rhyme I did with Tony Touch. And as I'm saying it to RZA, it hit him. I'm like hold up, let me call Touch first and get the blessing on him man. We from that school where you can't say the same rhyme twice. It didn't matter what capacity...So yeah man, I had to call Touch real quick and he gave me the blessing to drop that verse. So I told RZA I'ma drop this real quick, and I had to leave that morning, so RZA threw that beat on. The beat wasn't even complete -- I just heard the drums, couple of the voices, some hi-hats. I dropped the rhyme."
"Maybe about five, six days later when I came back, I had heard other voices on it," he continues. "Meth, Cap, a couple of people went in. When I bumped into Ghost and them, they was like 'you killed that shit, you bodied that shit. Damn bro! What I'm supposed to say behind that?!' Remember I rhymed to the drums and all that. So when I heard it full blast with the other vocals on it, the horns, flutes and everything. Bro, it was crazy! I heard it loud, full blast! I was like, this is different."
"I remember we were arguing cause we didn't want the record to be that long," reveals Deck. "But RZA wanted everybody to make sure they got a piece of that." It's an incredible bit of hip-hop history for any Wu-Tang fan, and not the first Talib Kweli has granted us on The People's Party. Not long ago, Method Man shared the extensive origin tale of "M.E.T.H.O.D. Man," which you can check out right here.