The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable review – a secret album, $2m and one bad buyer

By Daniel Okafor

Netflix's new documentary The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable revisits the strangest release strategy in hip-hop history: an album only one person was legally allowed to own, sold for $2m to Martin Shkreli.

The subject, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, is the Wu-Tang Clan's seventh album. The group recorded the 31-track double album in secret between 2007 and 2013. It reunited all the surviving members of the Staten Island rap crew. Guests ranged from the expected (Redman, offshoot collective Wu-Tang Killa Bees) to the genuinely odd (Cher, and Game of Thrones actor Carice van Houten).

The sound, according to those involved, harked back to the group's 1990s beginnings. The distribution model, however, looked nothing like the 1990s.

Why did almost nobody hear it?

The group pressed exactly one copy, on CD, encased in layers of filigreed silver. The legal terms barred any commercial use for 88 years. Depending on your generosity — and perhaps your net worth — that decree read as either a stunt or a pointed artistic statement about streaming's devaluation of music.

It worked as hype. Anyone near the blogosphere or cable news in 2015 knows how the story ended: the $2m purchaser, and thus the single intended listener of this musical treasure, was Martin Shkreli. The "pharma bro" had made himself widely despised for gleefully hiking prescription drug prices for profit.

What does the film get right and wrong?

The Guardian's review delivers a blunt verdict: the film, produced by RZA, is described as "rambling" and "strictly for super fans". That's the one hard judgment the source offers, and it stings a little. The lore of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is rich enough. The telling, apparently, is the problem.

The facts alone suggest why. Consider the inventory the documentary has to juggle:

• A 31-track double album recorded in secret over six years.
• A single silver-encased CD with an 88-year commercial ban.
• A $2m auction sale in 2015.
• A buyer who became arguably the most hated man on the internet.

That's a lot of plot. A rambling structure doesn't need inventing; the material supplies it.

Who is this actually for?

The review's framing is clear: casual viewers need not apply. Super fans — the kind who know their Killa Bees from their Redman features — will find the deep lore rewarding. Everyone else gets a familiar 2015 news cycle replayed at length.

There's an irony worth savoring. An album designed to resist commercial exploitation for 88 years has now generated a second wave of content, in documentary form, produced by RZA himself. The anti-commodification gesture keeps commodifying nicely.

Whether the film will change minds about Shkreli, the sale, or the album's artistic merit, the source doesn't say. The review suggests it won't convert newcomers. For the faithful, The Disciple adds another chapter to a saga that started as a provocation and became a parable about who gets to own music — and what happens when the answer is the wrong guy.