Inspectah Deck Offers Rare Comments on "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" as He Reflects on the WuTang Clan's Legacy (Exclusive) Angela AndaloroOctober 16, 2025 at 2:22 AM 0 Getty; Jon Lynn Inspectah Deck (left), 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' The WuTang Clan have completed their final US tour after three...
- - Inspectah Deck Offers Rare Comments on "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" as He Reflects on the Wu-Tang Clan's Legacy (Exclusive)
Angela AndaloroOctober 16, 2025 at 2:22 AM
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Getty; Jon Lynn
Inspectah Deck (left), 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' -
The Wu-Tang Clan have completed their final US tour after three decades together, sharing pieces of memorabilia from the final dates with fans
Inspectah Deck tells PEOPLE about crafting the tour experience for fans, complete with their auction partnership with The Realest
The rapper also opens up about the group's lost album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
The Wu-Tang Clan is reflecting on three decades of bringing the ruckus.
The rap group has recently completed a very special tour, proclaiming it their final as a collective. "Wu-Tang: The Final Chamber" was designed to bring fans a unique experience and thank them for three decades of support.
Members RZA, GZA, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Raekwon, Masta Killa, Cappadonna and Mathematics found a special way to let fans have a piece of the historical run. PEOPLE caught up with Inspectah Deck to discuss the tour and their partnership with The Realest on an auction for fans to commemorate it.
"I named the tour," Deck tells PEOPLE. "I mean, it had a couple of names, the final chapter and all. In my mind, it's not the final chapter, but I understand everyone's grown now."
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Wu-Tang Clan in 1994
Deck, 55, is a proud dad, sharing, "My daughter is going to medical school. My son's about to start art school. I have a young one."
"Everyone's growing, families are growing now. RZA's son plays in our band. Some of us are grandfathers, and so I understand the life cycle. I'm not trying to stop what's the natural progression of things. You can't hold on to everything forever. But Wu-Tang is forever," he says.
"And if I could hold on to this to the grave... and I'm sure I will, man, it's in my blood. It's what we love to do."
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Wu-Tang Clan in July 2025
Wu-Tang fans are some of the most loyal, not just in hip-hop, but music altogether. It's for that reason it was important to let them own a piece of the final run.
"This is something that should have been happening, as least since the middle of our career, giving fans pieces of these tours. I think that's fly," he shares.
"Me personally, I do [give it away] anyway. I'll come home from tour and I'll have boxes of clothes and I'm like, 'Man, I'm not bringing all this home. I got 10 black hoodies in the house already. I don't need 10 more in there.' So I go to the yellow donation boxes that are located in my city and wind up giving these things away anyway. To do it this way, to give it directly to fans to help enhance their experience, that's fire.
Inspectah Deck's Tiffany & Co. signed commemorative Madison Square Garden ticket was the highest-selling auction item, with the winning bid at $6,000. His commemorative United Center custom signed Wu-Tang Chess set brought in another $1,015.
Wu-Tang is no stranger to providing unique fan experiences. From 2007 to 2013, they quietly worked on Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, meant to be a rare album of which only one copy exists. The single-album was pressed in 2014 and went up for auction in 2015.
The coveted seventh album was auctioned off for $2 million to a mystery buyer, later revealed to be entrepreneur Martin Shkreli. Shkreli shot to infamy as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals when he raised the price of a drug that treats a rare disorder in pregnant women and HIV and cancer patients by 5,000 percent (from $13.50 to $750 a pill). A federal court later indicted him for securities fraud.
In a seizure of assets, the federal government took the album, which later bounced between NFT groups in the years that followed. For 10 days, beginning on June 15, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin went on public display for the first time at Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Australia.
Fans had the opportunity to listen to the fabled record at listening parties held in Mona's Frying Pan Studios, in addition to a curated 30-minute mix from the LP during the limited exhibition run. While those fans, who signed a waiver that any recordings from the event couldn't be shared until 2103, have heard the album, Deck admits he himself never heard anything completed.
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"That's so funny, man. When I signed up for that, I didn't sign up for that," he laughs. "That album wound up being what it was. We had no idea that it was going to be that."
"To this day, I haven't heard the full songs. I just remember my verses that I wrote. I don't remember hearing any of the other guys' verses. So to me, that album is still a mystery as much as the mystery of chessbox," he says.
"It's a shame because the fans should at this point be able to hear that album. I think there's something going on where you can't hear it for another 80 years or something. But I don't know, I think that's not fair for Wu-Tang fans. I mean, at least let them get to experience it, let them hear it one time, even if it is not available for sale. Other than that, what's the purpose of having it?"
He continued, "I'm a fan of Wu-Tang just as much as anyone else. And I would've loved to have heard the whole album from top to bottom, so I could have gave it my thoughts. And it might be a dope project. I don't even know. That's the crazy part. The world may never know. Maybe 88 years from now, they'll dig up a time capsule or something and somebody will actually play it."
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