Uncontrolled Substance (lost original recordings of Inspectah Deck album; 1995)

Album cover

Status: Lost

Background

Inspectah Deck (real name Jason Hunter) is a rapper from the New York borough of Staten Island. He is a member of the 9-man group called the 'Wu-tang Clan' based in the same area. After the group's initial release 'Enter the 36 chambers' (1993), the members of the group set out to release their own albums in the following years.

Whilst members of the group such as 'Method Man' and 'GZA' released Tical (1994) and 'Liquid swords'(1995) respectively, Inspectah's solo album was not to be released until 1999. This album, although still being named 'Uncontrolled substance' is vastly different for what the original version was planned to be.

The lost album

Whist the recordings for Inspectah's album were done as early as 1993 and a release was slated for 1995, a combination of his label Loud/RCA having bigger releases to promote, signing on other big name rappers and eventually going under meant that the release had to be delayed to 1997, by which time he would have released it under new Sony ownership of the label.

After this initial setback, worse news came. He then learned that his producer and fellow clan member the RZA had had a flood in his apartment, meaning he then lost all of his original recordings. RZA estimates around 300 different songs were lost in this flood, and despite Inspectah's best efforts to restore the water damaged floppy disks they were being kept on it was to no avail. This agonisingly meant he had to start again from scratch, and eventually released Uncontrolled substance in 1999, which can be found easily online.

Due to the original copies being damaged beyond restoration, none of the recordings for the initial release exist online or otherwise. Inspectah Deck went on to say in a 2015 interview with VLAD TV (linked below) that his original vision was entirely different to the released one, with songs such as 'Not your average flow' and 'Blowing up the spot' among the lost recordings.

External Links

Article about the 2015 interview

Article about the flood in more detail

'Vibe' magazine article, with RZA being interviewed about the flood