Joey Bada$$ Cast As Inspectah Deck In Wu-Tang Clan Hulu Series

Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Joey Bada$$ Cast As Inspectah Deck In Wu-Tang Clan Hulu Series

Johnny Nunez/WireImage

The Wu-Tang Clan have one of the greatest stories in American music, and we are currently seeing what happens when our present-day content providers get ahold of that story. Last month, Showtime aired the extremely watchable four-part documentary series Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics And Men. And last year, we got the news that Wu-Tang’s story is also about to become a dramatic series. Wu-Tang leader RZA has co-created Wu-Tang: An American Saga, a 10-part dramatic series that Hulu is making. Wu-Tang: An American Saga is shooting right now, and we’ve just gotten some interesting news about the show’s casting.

Right now, it looks like the show has taken the fascinating tack of casting actual present-day New York rappers as Wu-Tang members. Yesterday, Joey Bada$$ did an interview with New York radio queen Angie Martinez. And after a bit of hemming and hawing, he announced that he’s playing Inspectah Deck in the show. That’s weird casting! Joey Bada$$ has obviously always been in love with the New York rap of the ’90s, and his crew Beast Coast just released the album Escape From New York, which is very clearly Wu-Tang-inspired. And Joey has some experience acting; he’s played Leon on 12 episodes of Mr. Robot and also done a couple of episodes of BET’s Boomerang series. But Joey looks nothing like Inspectah Deck, and he’s still got his braids in that Angie Martinez interview, so he hasn’t shaved his head or anything.

In that same interview, Joey also mentions another piece of casting news: The Harlem rapper Dave East will play Method Man. Unlike Joey Bada$$, Dave East doesn’t have much acting experience, though he did recently say that he’ll be in a movie called Beats, set to come out later this month on Netflix. But Dave East does have the advantage of looking a whole lot like Method Man.

As Pitchfork points out, Joey Bada$$ talks about the Wu-Tang series around the 17:35 mark of this video:

So what other New York rappers are going to end up in this thing?

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