The Disciple (2026) Movie Script

[static hiss]
[man 1 clears his throat]
Originally, the Wu-Tang
were an offshoot of Shaolin.
They still like to think
that they are better than us.
[bang]
[man 2] I wanna bust
your motherfucking head!
[laughter]
[dramatic string music playing]
[man 3] We have a crazy talented guest
on today.
I've been looking forward
to having this guest for so long.
He's a visionary.
He's done everything in music and film.
-He's a titan of of everything.
-[man 4] Who is this guy?
[man 3] He's a founding member
of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Influenced countless musicians,
it's the one and only RZA, you guys.
-[man 4] Ah, it's RZA!
-[man 5] Wow.
-[man 4] Woah.
-[man 3] Yeah.
[RZA] Guess I gotta take off my camera.
[man 3] You guys know this?
It's one of the coolest stories
in art history.
[trumpet playing jazzy tune]
You guys recorded your seventh album,
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,
and you made one copy.
[man 4] It was a controversial purchase
of it.
-[man 6] I don't know this.
-[RZA] Yes, a very controversial purchase.
We'll make one single copy of the album,
treat it like it's the Mona Lisa.
It was a combination
of ideas that led to it.
Me and my student, Cilvaringz.
Won't take all the credit.
[man 6] Would you ever do it again?
[RZA] Um
[RZA] Rhymes are like poison, son
Now watch your dosage
I'm like the priest Pai Mei
The White Lotus
[man] If what you say is true,
the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang
could be dangerous.
[music fades out]
See them?
[man] He's very vicious.
An expert with a double-edged sword.
Number one.
[hip-hop music playing]
[music continues muffled]
[Tarik] Home was always a happy place,
but the outside world taught me
something different from a young age.
The earliest memory
of my life is an unfortunate one.
My sister and I, aged four and three,
were being cornered into a spiky bush
-[dog barks]
-at a playground park by our flat.
[gentle piano music playing]
This Dutch lady covered in eczema
kept throwing a stick near us
for her dog to fetch,
thoroughly enjoying how terrified
we were of dogs.
Dogs were uncommon in Muslim households,
so we didn't grow up
knowing much about them, except they bite.
Scared to tears, we were cornered
into thorny bushes and sharp grasses,
which cut us up severely.
My mother heard us crying
from our 12th-floor apartment
where we lived overlooking the park.
[woman shouting]
Shouting from the top of her lungs
from the balcony,
she begged the lady to stop.
But the lady simply smirked back
and carried on.
[dog barking]
[children screaming]
My mother rushed down 12 flights
of concrete stairs
and charged straight at the lady.
She blacked out, snatched the chain
from round the woman's neck,
lacerated her entire face,
and had to be pulled off
by people biking by.
They tried to hold my mother down
until the cops came,
but she bit herself loose
and carried us back to our flat.
We were bloody,
cut up all over our bodies,
and wailing in shock.
The police arrived that night
to arrest my mom.
The racist lady had been taken
to the hospital with severe bruising,
lacerated skin, a brain concussion,
broken arm in two places,
and a broken shoulder,
and in severe shock.
Racism against Moroccans
was quite normal back then,
but seeing how cut up
my sister and I were,
the courts miraculously sympathized
with my mother
and let her off on self-defense.
The racist lady was sent
to jail for a month.
[gentle piano music fades out]
[woman] So why are you letting us
make this movie about you?
Why Well
I think a lot has been said about me,
especially with the Wu-Tang album,
and I figured that a doc would show
my side of the story.
[woman] Is there any risk in it?
Any risk? There's always risk.
At the mercy
of somebody else's vision of you.
[chuckles]
You know?
[hip-hop music echoing]
[funky music playing]
[man] Ya!
So as early as I remember,
we lived in a 16-story flat
on the edge of Tilburg North.
That's where most of the immigrants lived.
Engine, engine number nine
[Tarik] Nobody wanted to be friends
with Moroccan kids,
so I had no friends to play with.
What I learned early on was
to kinda isolate myself,
so I would usually just go to my room,
have my toys,
and create my own little world
and my own little bubble,
where I felt very comfortable.
-Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh
-Can't touch this
[Tarik] I loved music.
I grew up with pop music.
Michael Jackson, George Michael,
Duran Duran.
I'm not embarrassed to say, when MC Hammer
and Vanilla Ice started popping up,
I loved that shit.
I I went for it.
I think I even made my mom
buy me the Hammer pants.
All right?
Like, "Fix me some Hammer pants."
"I need to I need to look like that."
I met my friend Jeremy at basketball.
First impression was,
"Who is this nerdy guy?"
-[man] Ya!
-[swooshing]
[man] Ya!
But, uh, somehow, this nerdy guy,
he was able to dunk.
[distorted cheering]
[Tarik] So one day, I'm on a street court
when my friend Jeremy rode up
on his bicycle.
He was in love with this new rap album,
Enter the 36 Chambers,
by some group called the Wu-Tang Clan.
When he showed us the cover,
we all laughed at it.
Seeing these hooded guys
could only mean one thing. Weird shit.
Half a minute into the game,
Jeremy put his Wu-Tang CD in
Tiger style
-and turned it all the way up.
-Tiger style!
Yo, huh, huh
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin ta fuck wit
[Tarik] When it dropped,
it was this fierce rap style
kinda cut through the song.
Angelo and I looked at each other
Bam! Oh man
and Jeremy just smiled
and gave us the middle finger.
-Tarzan
-I be tossin', enforcin'
My style is awesome
I'm causin' more Family Feud
Than Richard Dawson
-And the survey said
-"You're dead"
Fatal Flying Guillotine
Chops off your fuckin' head!
MZA "Who is that?!"
Ayo, the Wu is back!
Makin' niggas go, "Bo! Bo!"
[man] Yeah, yeah, yeah, y'all, what's up?
We're here to see the Wu-Tang Clan.
Staten Island's own Wu-Tang Clan.
They're upstairs right now
recording their new album.
And if you want beef
Then bring the ruckus
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing ta fuck wit
[man] Ya!
[Tarik] Wu-Tang is the core nine members.
The fuck you wanna know, man?
[Tarik] RZA, GZA,
Ol' Dirty Bastard,
Method Man, Raekwon.
-[Raekwon] Raekwon the Chef.
-[man] Hai!
[Raekwon] What's goin' on? Peace.
My man Inspectah Deck.
-What's up, baby? What's up?
-[sword sound effect]
[Tarik] Ghostface, U-God, Masta Killa,
and then, later on, Cappadonna,
who, at this time, was incarcerated.
Everything that happened
with Wu-Tang musically and business-wise,
it was always through RZA.
Ta fuck wit
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin'
Yo. What is what is Wu-Tang?
The Wu is the way.
The Tang, that's the slang in it.
-It's the sword sound.
-Ya!
That's your tongue.
If your shit is dumb,
you're gonna lose your head.
If your shit is sharp,
you're gon' make it to the next scene.
We go through 36 chambers.
Yo, I grew up on the curb
[Tarik] Wu-Tang, it's so much more
than just hip-hop music.
In that time, it was really a unique blend
of Afro-Americans mixing it up
with Asian influences.
[RZA] If you go back into hip-hop history,
it started in 1973.
When, that same summer, Bruce Lee,
Enter the Dragon hits 42nd Street,
most of us are in those theaters.
The things that we are gaining from cinema
is finding its way into our art.
Some of the early breakdance moves
were seen in a martial-arts film.
-[exaggerated punch sound effect]
-Ah!
-[eerie note playing]
-[man grunts]
My name is Shi Yan Ming.
I'm a 34th-generation
of Shaolin Temple in China.
But I am the founder and abbot
of USA Shaolin Temple.
[RZA] Up from the 36 Chambers!
-[echoing]
-[RZA chuckles]
It's the Ghostface Killah [chuckles]
And I love Wu-Tang Clan.
I love to listen to their music. Yeah.
Wu-Tang, the guys, the gentlemen.
They love martial arts movies.
Back to 1980s,
in the movie theater in Times Square.
They just stayed all day long.
That time, Hong Kong Shaw Brothers movies
play in the movie theater.
Yeah. You see
You listen to Wu-Tang music.
[chuckles]
They borrow a lot in their songs.
Ha-ha-ha, hoo-yaw!
Hey, Wu-Tang sword style.
Shaolin shadow box, you know?
[man] Hey! Ha! Ha!
[RZA] I would cut school and go
to the movies. You know what I mean?
At first, you know, we would watch
the martial-arts films for the action,
but I started watching them
and, like, listening more,
and some of the things they were saying
was very philosophical, very profound.
The brotherhood martial-art movies had,
those kind of morals, only could get it
through the Asian cinema.
And I absorbed it, and I took it
to the Wu-Tang brothers,
and it was like,
"Yo, are we the Wu-Tang Clan?"
-[laid-back beat playing]
-Our philosophy was so embedded in us.
We took it and applied it to our lives.
So for instance,
Staten Island, my hometown,
we renamed it Shaolin.
No fire is too hot
No snow is too cold
When I come to Staten Island,
I always go to the hood first.
I don't like staying in the hood
because it's overwhelming sometime
with the memories.
This was my building, 180, right here.
I lived in apartment 2B,
right here,
for the majority of my childhood.
Far as the Clan, we grew up together
right here on Staten Island.
The projects would be,
like, a group of buildings
close in proximity.
It probably was an experiment,
so they called it a "project"
to see what would happen if we stuffed
all these minorities in here.
This is where we grew up. We used to rap,
running up and down here rappin'.
Me, Method Man.
See the Wu-Tang Clan District?
Gotta get that. You got that?
Look, right there. Wu-Tang Clan District.
Get the sign.
Can't beat that right there, yo.
[woman] How did it feel when that went up?
I was in tears.
They had the the
the stage over there, descending.
All these people came out.
I didn't have no idea
this was gonna happen.
RZA said he knew.
I don't know how. He must be a prophet.
-What's good, bro?
-It's great. How you?
I'm good in the hood,
but I'm better with cheddar, man.
-You good?
-No doubt.
-All ready, bro.
-All right. Peace.
-How you be, man?
-Chillin'.
All right. That's what's up.
You know, that's my man right here.
He runs the ice cream truck.
A'ight? Salute to him.
Know what I'm sayin'?
He been out here for years.
I knew him since he was little,
and now he doing positive things.
I didn't have a bank account
until I got older.
My first check was $61,000,
and I didn't
I thought I was gonna go into the bank,
cash that, and have it in my pocket
'cause that's where I used to keep money.
I never had a wallet.
It was a publishing check from RZA,
um from when I did the first song,
um, "Ice Cream,"
on Raekwon's Built 4 Cuban Linx.
["Ice Cream" playing]
Wu-Tang brought together
a lot of different cultures,
and in fusing different things,
I think it caused
the hip-hop audience to grow.
Black, brown, red, yellow,
you know, Native American.
Everybody under one roof.
-This is our land.
-Hey, so give praise or something!
[fighting sound effects]
-[man] Ah! Ha!
-[funky hip-hop beat playing]
[Tarik] I'd become a real die-hard fan.
We formed our own little group
-[tape rewinding]
-We come underground
[Tarik] and called ourselves
the Henchmen.
Whoa, Henchmen.
That's Tarik.
[Tarik] Artist name, Cilvaringz.
Jeremy, Moongod Allah.
-DJ Sueside.
-[man] Ya!
For me, I was just like,
"I believe in what these guys are doing."
[Tarik] We were Moroccan,
Indonesian, Italian, Curaaoans.
It was a mix
of ethnicities and backgrounds.
Everything we recorded was
an attempt to mimic the Wu-Tang Clan.
[Jeremy] So our sound was,
at the beginning, really crappy.
[tinny music playing]
Tarik, he was the guy
who was practicing in front of mirrors
how he should pose and how he looks
when he raps certain stuff.
Scream in front your building
I stopped battling
'Cause every time I battled
I was charged for attempt to kill
And played it back
Start fronting
[Jeremy] He's an entrepreneur.
He always wants
to explore where you can take something.
[Tarik] I was always the one that said,
"We gotta go, like, big."
"We gotta go to New York and go get signed
to the Wu-Tang Clan record label."
My friends were always like, "Yeah"
They didn't want to discourage me,
but I don't think they really believed it.
I wasn't trying to join the actual Clan.
The Clan wasn't expanding in any way,
but the Wu-Tang Killa Beez,
that was an ever-expanding entity.
[RZA] Wu-Tang Killa Beez are those
who are influenced or affiliated
with Wu-Tang Clan in one way or another,
either by being a student
or by being a community member
that has a bond
and is working
for the same cause as Wu-Tang.
I got Shabazz the Disciple right here.
Hey, yo, Shabazz.
You got the hot single out,
"Death Be the Penalty."
Yo, where you started from?
I mean, who first put you on?
Well, the RZA from Wu-Tang.
You know what I'm sayin'?
He just put me on, plugged me in.
It was like a plug with energy,
and it needed a socket to relate,
and that's how he plugged me in.
[Tarik] In my mind,
if you wanna make it to Wu-Tang,
RZA is the guy.
That's the abbot.
The one who lets you in or not.
That's the hierarchy as I understood it.
[woman] Did you honestly believe
you would find them?
I You know that clich
of, like, nothing is impossible?
I forced myself to believe that
quite often.
Look. They're people, right?
But we can fly there.
We can meet someone
as they come out of the building
and just stop them on the streets.
You have to start somewhere,
and that place is always a shitty place.
Right? But you gotta know.
Ooh-ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh-ooh ooh-ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh-ooh
[Tarik] When I went to to New York
the first time
Ooh-ooh ooh-ooh-ooh
it was incredible.
We landed in Kennedy.
So you go through Queens.
-Imagine smokin' weed in
-[Tarik] You see the hood.
You see the basketball courts.
-It looked exactly like the movies.
-No welfare supporters
More conscious of the way
We raise our daughters
Troopin' outta state
For a plate of knowledge
If coke was cooked
Without the garbage
[Tarik] We get to Manhattan.
Cop cars, the helicopters in the sky,
smoke coming out of the ground.
Subways.
If I ruled the world
[Tarik] We were staying
at the YMCA on 47th Street,
so I walked all the way down
to the Staten Island Ferry,
which was a hell of a walk, but you got
to see everything, which was cool.
[twinkly piano music playing]
[serene strings join piano]
[foghorn blares]
On the ferry,
we passed the Statue of Liberty,
but it didn't mean that much to me.
I was headed
for the brotherlands of Shaolin.
Victory Boulevard was a short walk away.
And there it was, Wu-Wear.
Stepped inside, and it was like, "Wow."
Their pictures are on the wall,
big "W" on the floor.
"Peace," I opened. "I thought maybe
I could drop off a tape for RZA?"
I obviously wasn't the first to come
to the shop with a request like that.
So it was, "Yeah, a'ight,"
and I think he just threw it down
in the box this little box next to him
with all these tapes and CDs and stuff.
And I was like, "Ah."
[grunts]
[Tarik] Somewhere midway
on a pedestrian crossing at a stoplight,
I saw a sticker
for Shabazz the Disciple's new single,
"Street Parables,"
so I stopped off at the record shop
and picked up a 12-inch.
It wasn't until
I began packing my suitcase
that I noticed a phone number
on Shabazz's single.
I rushed downstairs to the phone booth
and rang the 718 number.
"Peace." I'd recognize
that hoarse voice anywhere.
Tell me
Yo, it was all a dream
[Shabazz] Cilvaringz, right?
It's crazy how I met him, right?
One day my phone rings.
"Yo, Shabazz?" I was like, "Yeah."
He's like, "I could tell by the voice
from the record."
"I'm a big fan.
You my favorite affiliate," ba-ba-ba-ba.
He was like, "Yo, I was trying
to meet up with RZA and them."
"I got some, you know, ideas." He goes,
"I love you guys. Y'all my heroes."
Bong, "Y'all inspire me,
but especially you."
"Like, as far as, like, the nine,
but you, like, you got
you come with different
you come different, like."
"The biblical stuff. You you just,
like, makes it all make sense."
He was like, "Yeah, man, I was
I'm a little disappointed
because I was trying to meet RZA."
His wings was down.
Like, he was draggin' his wings.
I lift his spirit right back up. Boop!
And then he was like,
"Yo, I can stay in touch?"
"Hell yeah. Stay in touch with me."
Big ol' Shabazz. He's a real Gravedigga.
[Tarik] Shabazz was more than happy
to chat, and we spoke for over an hour.
He told me all about the mad mob
that he ran with in the streets
and how they connected him to Wu-Tang.
[woman] Why did you feel so generous
towards somebody
who's calling from
literally the other side of the world?
It's spiritual.
It's I move by the spirit.
I know who the devil is,
and I know who the righteous are.
It's a spiritual thing,
and I trust that. That's it.
[ethereal music playing]
[music fades]
A sting from a killa bee
Kickin' the battery
Out the back of them wisecracks
Distorted for your get-high
You hijack
These friendly skies ain't for you
They for me and mine
This is right here the second coming
right here.
You know what I'm saying? Wu-Tang Forever.
Second LP. Double CD.
Took two CDs to explain
what the fuck was on the brain this time.
But this one here, you getting all that
rolled up into one big fat blunt.
So this is gon' be the biggest album
of all time right here.
You know what I'm sayin'?
'Cause it's gonna sell forever.
-[whooshing]
-[bell dings]
[indistinct chatter]
[people screaming excitedly]
[whooshing]
[whooshing]
[whooshing]
[record scratches]
-Raise hell
-Ah!
[Tarik] One day, I'm in Jeremy's bedroom
recording a new song,
and we hear a loud stomp-stomping
running up the stairs.
-Angelo burst through the door.
-[crash]
Wu-Tang is coming to Amsterdam,
motherfuckers. [laughs]
He had seen the flyers somehow,
and they were up for weeks.
So I was like, "Fuck."
I thought tickets were sold out.
Then, Monday morning,
I remember it was raining super hard,
and all three of us were supposed to meet
at the post office,
and Angelo and Jeremy were nowhere
to be found. "Where the fuck are they?"
Back home and drenched,
I call Jeremy and Angelo.
Angelo's mother picked up.
She wouldn't let him come to the phone.
Apparently he was grounded.
Jeremy didn't ring me back
until much later.
He, too, was grounded for beating up a kid
the same Saturday after losing
a basketball game to his team.
[woman] He says you were supposed
to meet him, but you were grounded.
That's Yeah It could be.
If you say I'm grounded
I've been grounded a lot.
Tramp!
[Tarik] April 19th seemed cursed.
My mom would not let me go
to Amsterdam by myself,
and so she was like,
"You're taking your cousin."
[martial arts fighting noises]
This guy came fresh from Morocco,
had no idea of concerts,
let alone hip-hop.
He had the tightest blazer on,
tightest leather jeans,
gold necklace, gold watch,
and leather fucking boots.
All Versace, he proudly claimed.
"Did you poop your trousers?" he asked,
the concept of baggy jeans
being totally alien to him.
Standing in the queue,
these guys are going,
"Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang, la-la-la!"
He joins in,
"Vu-Tang!" You know,
I was like, "Nah, man."
Like It was like going
to a concert with Borat.
[crowd chanting] Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang,
Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang!
[Tarik] Finally inside,
without any announcement or flair,
Ol' Dirty Bastard casually strolls onstage
with a mic
and started talking to the crowd.
"Y'all gotta get drunk first
before I do any motherfucking thing."
[cheering]
All right?
So I'm gonna go upstairs
to my dressing room.
Y'all party.
Hump, ha
Fuck on the dance floor.
I don't give a fuck what y'all do.
Y'all know how we get down.
Y'all know I can't do no show sober,
though. Y'all know this shit.
[Tarik] And with that,
he casually disappeared offstage again.
Everyone was agitated
with the long wait for the show to begin.
Finally
Oh, shit!
Wuh, wuh, wuh, wuh-wuh, wuh,
wuh, wuh, wuh, wuh, wuh
[all] Wu-Tang Clan comin' atcha!
Watch your step, kid
Watch your step, kid
It's on. Like, this Yes.
Cool. Now I gotta get up there,
like, God knows how, like, right?
I smoke on the mic
Like "Smokin'"Joe Frazier
The hellraiser
Raisin' hell with the flava
Terrorize the jam
Like troops in Pakistan
Swingin' through your town
Like your neighborhood Spider-Man
So, uh, tick-tock, keep tickin'
The Lone Ranger
[Tarik] The show erupted,
and the mosh pits began.
And in one wave of the crowd,
I got flung forwards
and then to the right side of the venue.
My cousin is punching everybody
out the way.
He was thinking
the mosh pit was an actual fight,
but I kept my eyes on RZA.
U got it going on, pal
Call me the rap assassinator
Rhymes rugged
And built like Schwarzenegger
What? What?
Hit you with sixteen shots
Bla-bla-bla-bla-bla-bla-bla
It's the Method Man
For short, Mr. Meth
-Move it tonight!
-[crowd singing]
Ha! Tonight
[Tarik] It began to sink in that my heroes
were really right there in front of me,
only a few feet away.
[stirring music playing]
Between songs, RZA would speak his wisdom,
while Dirty scouted the audience for girls
and completely ignored RZA's efforts.
Let me tell you somethin'.
See, rappin' is just rappin' over a beat.
You can get any kinda
You can take a R&B song and rap over it,
and that's rap music.
But hip-hop is the shit you feel inside
your heart, you know what I'm sayin'?
That's the shit Wu-Tang is bringing
to y'all motherfuckers, understand?
You understand what I mean?
Put your fists up.
-Put it up! Put it up!
-[synth notes playing]
-Put it up! Put it up!
-Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
-Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
-Oh
-Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
-Oh
-Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
-Oh
-Wu! Wu! Wu! Wu!
-Oh-la-la-la-la-la
[Tarik] So my cousin yelled, "Yalla,"
you know, tapping his gold watch.
It was 11:30.
He was under strict rules from my mom
to get me back on that train to Tilburg.
So out of options,
I kinda spaced out with disappointment
and turned to follow him out the venue.
And then, I hear the words,
"Yo, any MCs in the house,
come to the front."
And I froze to the spot.
"Yo, Math. Throw that shit on, baby."
I didn't know who said it,
but the whole crowd
suddenly rushed forward,
and I was like, "Fuck."
"This is this is my this is my shot."
Dirty pulled the first guy up,
gave him a mic,
and I tell my cousin,
I'm like, "Yo, I gotta get to the stage."
He's like, "No, we gotta go. What?"
I said, "I've gotta get to the stage."
Without blinking, he began pushing me
through the crowd in chaos.
My glasses fell off my face.
Right temple had broken off.
I balanced them back
and told my cousin to push again.
I must have looked like a crushed cartoon
because Meth and Dirty spotted me
and seemed to be laughing their asses off.
[blissful string chords playing]
And then, as if God himself
in Michelangelo's creation of Adam,
Dirty stretched his arm forward
towards me.
Tens of other hands clutched onto his,
but he shook them off
and kept his focus on me.
My cousin gave me one last push,
and I locked my hand around Dirty,
who felt incredibly strong.
He lifted me up, snatched the mic,
and pushed it into my hands,
and almost by autopilot,
I began rhyming the verse
I had practiced over and over.
Dirty on my left, Method Man on my right,
and the words just came out.
A total out-of-body experience.
When I finished, I turned to Dirty,
who had, like,
the most beautiful smile on his face.
He had his hand out
for a handshake shoulder bump,
and then whispered in my ear,
"Yo, go see the god."
He was looking at RZA, who was looking
back at me, taking a puff of his joint.
"Yo, you, like, Clark Kented them."
"It's like you went in the booth
and came out like Superman."
Superman?
Christ, he actually fuckin' liked it.
"I'd love to represent
the Killa Beez one day."
He mentions opening a new chamber,
more international, in France.
"Think you can rock with that?"
And then,
within the same fraction of a second,
that dream got shattered to bits.
Dirty had pulled a girl on stage,
and so RZA and I are kind of watching.
Her boyfriend jumps onstage
and jumped Dirty,
and then all hell broke loose.
And security rushed the stage,
and everybody that didn't belong there,
including me,
were thrown back in.
Unfazed, Mathematics threw on
"Bring da Ruckus."
We all had to leave.
This wasn't fuckin' happening.
-[hip-hop beat playing]
-Bring da motherfuckin' ruckus!
Bring da motherfuckin' ruckus!
Bring da mother
Bring da motherfuckin' ruckus!
Bring da motherfuckin' ruckus!
[music fades out]
[RZA] Only when the disciple is ready
will the abbot appear.
-[echoing thump]
-[hip-hop music playing]
[Tarik] "I need to go back to New York,"
I told my mom.
"You need to worry
about your father tonight."
But I had seen my destiny that night,
and he must've seen it on my face.
"You have three months left of school."
"If you score above average,
we'll let you go to New York."
It was a take it or leave it,
and I took that shit quick.
He came back again Fire.
[jet engine rumbling]
[record scratches]
To my surprise, I saw another Wu logo
across the street. Wu-Nails.
And he met Sophia, RZA's sister.
[Sophia] Across from the Wu-Wear.
So y'all wanna come in,
come on down to Wu-Nails.
It's all in the family. Anything to do
with the Wu is a family thing.
We all connected together.
And then everything just started going.
[upbeat music playing]
[DJ Sueside] Wu party. I went with him.
It was funny.
We came out all dressed up in streetwear,
and everybody was dressed up
in really nice clothes and shit.
And we was like, "Yo."
And it was crazy.
I mean, practically met everybody.
They wanna know how and why
But let me first introduce myself
[DJ Sueside] Except RZA.
He flew from Amsterdam three times
thinkin' he's gonna meet his heroes.
Never met them. Felt real crazy.
Went home. Came back.
"This is my last time."
[tense electronic music playing]
He just was on a mission to keep going.
And he sat
on the steps at 99 University Plaza.
[Tarik] When the clock hit 5:00 p.m.,
some of the office lights
started to turn off.
Darkness started to set in.
My ass was cold and hurting
from sitting on the pavement.
So I bent down,
put my demo back in my backpack,
when a familiar voice
suddenly called, "Cilva?"
"Boy, why you sittin'
out on the curb in this cold?"
It was Sophia.
"Come upstairs. I'll give him a call.
Let's go."
[RZA] He just kept coming to New York.
He would meet with my sister.
Even my moms at one point.
They kept influencing me,
"You should meet this guy."
"He's this young guy. He's very dedicated.
He came way over from Europe."
I always say
that persistence overcomes resistance.
If you really want somethin'
and you visualize it in your mind,
your mind's gonna make it come to flesh.
And being a part of Wu-Tang was something
that was in his heart deep.
And he strived. He, like he traveled.
He called me again one day.
"Yo, I got signed."
[Tarik] They called me
in the middle of the night.
"We got signed. We got signed to
We got a record deal."
"We're with Wu-Tang."
So I said, "Fuck you. Stop playing."
But I heard Angelo in the back,
and his whole energy,
and then I realized maybe it's real.
Ooh, baby, come on
Baby, come on
Bad Boy
When you walk by every night
Talkin' sweet and lookin' fine
I get kinda hectic inside
Mmm, baby, I'm so into you
Darlin', if you only knew
All the things
That flow through my mind
[somber piano music playing]
[RZA] You never know where a disciple is
gonna come from. You know what I mean?
And sometimes it's not even your duty
to decipher who is your disciple,
who's not your disciple.
Because some things are delivered to you,
and sometimes you're delivered to others.
Ringz got a great opportunity,
and so, really, he shouldn't lose,
can't lose.
If he loses, it wasn't meant to be.
[Jeremy] So we went to Paris.
Erase your life data
The crowd scatter
Bitches sayin', "What's the matter?"
Bob Digi, notice hoverin' your city
Flashin' the W
That represents the Witty
[Jeremy] This is the first time
that we are in professional studios.
We've been in my studio that's my bedroom.
It was incredible.
[Tarik] The first song we make with RZA,
it's a song called "Ninja Starz,"
and it was it was clean.
This is the time when he was already
on his keyboard more than sampling.
And we heard it,
and then Jeremy looked at me and was like,
"Yo, you think we can change the drums?"
And I'm like, "Nah, bro.
Don't do no shit that's gonna upset him."
So, one morning, we're there very early,
and I think Jeremy just pushed us,
like, "Fuck that."
"These drums don't sound right."
[drums and bass playing]
It sounded a hell of a lot better.
We were like, "Let's just wait and see."
RZA came in, and he respected it.
He was like, "Okay."
[Tarik singing]
[RZA] There's many people would love
to be under the Wu umbrella.
There's many shall come,
and few shall be chosen.
You gotta have a whole package.
You gotta have talent.
You gotta have ambition.
You gotta have your own original ideas.
You know what I mean?
'Cause I don't want a bunch of clones
comin' amongst me,
tryin' to act and be like me.
That's not gonna do nothing
for me or yourself.
[Jeremy] The way RZA is,
his open mind gets us there,
and he's giving us a chance.
[RZA] I'm that kind of person,
I like to build with people
so they can understand
the mind frame we're dealing in
It ain't all about the money,
the fame, and the music.
That's just one aspect of life.
You know what I mean?
And so, therefore,
to represent what we stand for,
your mind gotta be in sync with our minds.
So they represent it,
they're gonna represent it in a proper way
and not an improper way.
[Tarik] Sometimes he would let me sit in
on business meetings
so I can just overhear
how he negotiated, how he talked.
He would sometimes give me pointers.
"Watch out for this, watch out for that."
And to allow me
to do a fucking world tour for him.
Hut! Huh!
[Tarik] That's a lotta trust.
Ha! Ho-hah!
[funky hip-hop beat playing]
[woman] When did you meet Cilvaringz
in person?
Okay, uh that that's a good question.
I never had that one. That's deep.
Wu-tang Killa Beez Tour 2000 Europe.
He's like, "Yo, I'm putting together
some Killa Bee tours."
Everybody on the bus?
-No, Shabazz ain't on the bus.
-[Tarik] Fucked up?
It says a lot, but he really wanted
to take his people along.
[Shabazz] Cilvaringz, man, he put together
them tours so professional.
Like, I've been on tours and all.
That was the most professional tour ever.
He was young physically,
but mentally, he was gone He was ahead.
Argh!
[Shabazz] He's the biggest fan of us,
but he wanted to help exaggerate it
even more than what it already was.
That's when you know it's a loyal fan.
That's where that loyalty comes in.
He's an example of that.
Because the fan didn't get jealous.
He wanted to help.
Called me that night, said she was horny
Playing with herself
[fades out]
[Tarik] I came in with Wu-Tang,
as a rap artist.
In the beginning,
I felt that I was just rhyming nonsense.
I learned to speak English
from watching The A-Team,
Airwolf, Knight Rider,
and Married with Children.
So I learned to speak English quite well.
Lyrically, however, I was rapping
about chopping necks,
and playing chess, and shadow boxing.
No lyrics about my life
or what I had went through.
As far as I was concerned,
I hadn't really gone through
anything worth telling.
I didn't think people
would be interested in racism,
or dogs, or strangers sexually abusing me.
Plus, I was quite the fanboy at that time.
I just wanted to sound
like the Wu-Tang members,
even though I had no idea
what they were rhyming about.
I just thought the way they put
their words together was just mesmerizing.
And RZA kinda set me straight,
said, "Talk about what you know."
[Shabazz] Horror.
[somber music playing]
Where we grow up at is horror.
Seeing your friend's brains blown out
in front of you.
Right? And the gun
the same gun put to your head,
and there's no bullets left.
That's horror. That's what happened to me.
That trauma grows up with you, inside you.
That's where hip-hop came in.
Hip-hop is therapy. It saves your life.
Can you put, like, something here
so I can put the water here
and it won't seep into the wood?
I call the booth the confession booth.
I get it all out on the booth.
I'm gon I gotta blaze this one.
This is my life
This is what defines me
The angelic narrator
Writing down what God reveals me
Spit it in the street tongue
So masses feel me
Ooh, that flow was ripe.
[in interview] "Wow, I feel better now
that I got it out of my system."
'Cause it'll stay in there
and just eat you alive like like cancer.
Like you know what I mean?
Have you mad at the world, grumpy.
I guess that's what Grumpy went through,
the Seven Dwarfs.
He went through the horror,
and he didn't know how to express hisself.
We all gotta express ourself.
Some do it with a graffiti can.
Some do it with a turntable, a guitar.
Some do it with a bat, a gun. Right?
We do it with a mic and a drum machine.
It's the best thing that ever happened
for us, to get horror out of our system.
-Got me some boxers, man.
-[man] That's it.
-I need some new boxers.
-Everything, man. One-stop shopping.
-These are cut small or big?
-They're cut regular.
-This is the one with the button, too.
-Yeah.
They always shop here. You know?
Very long time.
He and his whole crew.
You see them here, some of them?
-[Cappadonna] Yeah, you see it?
-[man chuckles]
[Cappadonna] This is it, man.
-I appreciate you.
-This a 3X, it'll fit you.
-Merci beaucoup.
-All right.
[man] Hell no. You're still in my house.
What up?
What's up, Earth? [chuckles]
He called me by my real name.
See, only he can do that.
My real name Darryl.
All right? My real name Darryl.
That's my man Earth, right there.
-That's my man Bird.
-What's good?
Know what I'm sayin'?
When I went to jail,
him and my brother and all of them,
they was wearing all my clothes.
They took all my clothes.
I could fit it.
[Cappadonna] Been around for years.
We raised each other
out here in these streets, man.
You know what I'm sayin'?
Let's catch the sun. Yeah.
We own the block today.
-[gentle piano music playing]
-We in here. Look at that.
Feels good to be alive, man.
Soooo!
[RZA] The Wu-Tang production,
I started that myself.
I had a choice. Every time we did
something negative, something went wrong.
Somebody got locked up, somebody got shot.
Negative breeds negative.
In the Bible, it says,
"For every negative action you do,
I give you one in return."
It says, "But for every positive action
you do, I multiply you by ten."
So then, the idea to do right
multiplied my entire family,
my entire team.
By myself, at the end of the day,
I'm a guaranteed gold artist.
With my Wu-Tang brothers,
I'm multiplatinum.
Together, the community eats.
[Tarik] With the success
of the Killa Beez tour,
I asked RZA if he would let me
put together a world tour for him.
[man grunts]
[Tarik] When I presented
what fees I think I could get,
it was well below
what he would get normally.
The reasons the fees were so low
was because of the numerous cancellations
from Wu-Tang members previously.
[cheering on TV]
I don't wanna rhyme tonight,
'cause I'm high as a motherf
[tape rewinds]
[cheering]
[RZA] Whoo! Yeah.
Listen, I'ma tell y'all something.
Listen, listen, listen.
They didn't give me a lot of money
to come here.
I came here for the love, a'ight?
[cheering]
Shit's real.
Matter of fact,
he keeping the money on this one.
[Tarik] Yeah. That's my money.
-[fan shouts]
-No problem.
We ended up doing 67 countries.
This is the welcoming party
for me in Australia.
RZA, RZA!
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta fuck wit
Wu-Tang
[Tarik] And some of them were had never
had an international hip-hop act perform,
so we were a huge deal.
Give it up for my brothers,
RZA and Cilvaringz of Wu-Tang Clan!
[jazzy music playing]
Yo! Yo! Yo! Yo!
Check out my gravel pit
Yo! Yo! Yo!
A mystery unravelin'
[Tarik] It was
an amazing learning experience,
and we got to see the world, you know?
We would see the Colosseum one day,
and then we're at the Kremlin,
and then we're at the Acropolis.
[opera music playing]
We would use it as mini-holiday.
[RZA] The Roman Empire
[Tarik] Yo, check that out. Whoa.
The Acropolis.
[DJ Sueside] Yeah, he filmin'. Where?
-In Greece.
-[Tarik] Gimme a kiss.
[DJ Sueside] Mwah!
We gotta perform here, man.
First time in history.
Right here at the Acropolis.
DJ Sueside and the Brain Freeze.
-[RZA] Guh!
-[DJ Sueside] Brain Freeze!
[opera music continues]
[Tarik] RZA was very much
the driving factor.
He wanted to soak up as much information
and culture as he could.
So if we were in Istanbul,
we would go to a mosque,
and he would try to learn
how to pray and wash off for prayer,
and we would have to show him.
He just wanted to experience it all.
We're in Egypt right now.
It's the RZA. I'm right here with you.
We just doin' our thing.
We in a Egyptian museum.
Let's get more mummies
and keep it poppin'.
You know? It's just like, "Wow."
[laughing]
So, Yen Chen Min,
you think your kung fu is good, eh?
Right, then.
We'll have ten rounds of combat,
and we'll see which is the greatest.
-[laughing]
-[gentle music playing]
[sighs] Brother Yen.
We have been here for five years,
and the monks been wondering
when they will start to practice kung fu.
I mean, we've been cooking and cleaning,
but you have yet to show us
your special styles.
Ho-ho, young brother, if only you knew.
When we teach you
how to cook and how to clean,
it improves your kung fu.
As you stir the soup,
it builds up strength for your wrist.
As you put the wood in the fire,
it develops your tiger-claw style.
Huh! So, Master,
all along, I've been learning?
[laughing]
Amitbha.
Buddha bless you.
-[Tarik chuckles]
-[DJ Sueside speaks indistinctly]
[Shi Yan Ming] I love Wu-Tang Clan.
I love they're open-minded, open heart,
and to spread courage,
love, joy, happiness.
First time I met RZA,
you know what I'm saying? Back in 1995.
[relaxed beat playing]
[RZA] Actually, I went looking for him
when I heard there was a monk in Shaolin,
who defected from Shaolin,
and started USA Shaolin Temple.
When I finally did meet him
at GZA's album-release party,
we basically became bong-bong.
You know what I mean?
[Shi Yan Ming] We met, just just hook up.
Just like this.
Bonded, and I didn't speak English,
he didn't speak Chinese.
Somehow we just, "Blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah."
Hours.
[RZA] When I met him in '95 and we became
brothers from another mother.
But he also became my shifu.
Shifu means teacher.
He borrowed a lot
of his philosophy not only from me.
He he taught himself a lot.
He he
I believe
he's a very open-minded person. Yeah.
Not only studying Chinese philosophy,
Buddhism, Taoist.
Don't think if people shave their head
or wear a robe, they're monks. No.
Doesn't mean they're monks.
Monks monks can sleep on the street,
homeless.
They can have long hair.
Monk means make wonderful relations.
That's what monk means.
You have to know how to talk,
how to share the knowledge.
How to speak out.
And how to get from the heart
the courage, kindness,
loving to other people.
[RZA] The abbot is an important role
that I am. You know what I mean?
You see, because I get to go around
and touch many people.
So I'm always training new people
or talking to new people
and shining a light and giving some people
a chance to live out their hearts.
You know what I'm sayin'?
If they really wanna be pure.
So I bring many disciples back
to the temple. You know what I mean?
[thunder rumbles]
It's like the monk San Te.
He was the first monk
to leave the Shaolin Temple.
He went out throughout the world,
and he taught many disciples.
I'm sort of like him, like that abbot.
He went out, touched many people,
and when these disciples came back
to the temple,
the other abbots
wouldn't really let these disciples in
until they tested their knowledge
and wisdom or their skills of martial art.
[man] Those three young men
waited five days.
It seems they're serious.
-[RZA] Then they let them in.
-[suspenseful string music playing]
When somebody like Cilvaringz is met
by the Wu-Tang Clan members,
he gets the chance to prove his worth
or or unprove his worth.
Just because the abbot touched you,
that don't make you automatic.
It makes you a automatic candidate,
but it don't make you
a automatic disciple.
You have to now go through the chambers.
You know what I mean?
[cheering]
But when a few brothers feel it the same,
then it's like, "Yo, it's real."
[crowd chanting] Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang! Wu-Tang!
[track playing]
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta fuck wit
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta fuck wit
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' ta fuck wit
Yo, there's no place to hide
Once I step inside the room
Dr. Doom, prepare for the boom!
Bam! Uh, slam, uh
[record playing] Tossin', enforcin'
My style is awesome
I'm causin' more Family Feud
Than Richard Dawson
And the survey said, "You're dead!"
Fatal Flying Guillotine
Chops off your fuckin' head!
MZA "Who is that?!"
A-yo, the Wu is back!
[Tarik] They always say, like,
don't meet your superheroes.
That didn't happen for me.
All gentlemen. All super cool.
[serene music playing]
Hey! We checking poopers.
If you put a big banquet out
and you invite people to come to eat,
everybody gonna come to eat,
you know what I mean?
But it's gonna be a few people that come
that bring another dish to the table.
Regardless of the banquet, they gon' come
and be like, "Yo, I brought more bread."
"I brought more wine."
You know what I mean? It's like that.
So what you bringin' to the table
is more important
than what you takin' from the table.
[harmonica playing]
[man] Whoo!
Shit is like Vegas in here.
What's goin' on?
These dice don't give a fuck
about a motherfuckin' thing.
[Tarik in interview] And now I had ins
to everybody. I got their phone numbers.
-My dice get out.
-[man] My beat is golden!
This is the GZA. I'm live up in here
with my brother, Cilvaringz.
[serene piano music playing]
[RZA] Cilvaringz got Wu-Tang training
personally in hip-hop.
He got a chance to be amongst the abbot
and some of the great Wu-Tang students,
you know what I mean?
He's rising up in the ranks.
Rising up with his talent.
All he gotta do is keep pushing.
-[hip-hop beat playing]
-[cheering]
[Tarik] I made it.
I got married.
[cheering]
I released my debut album.
I didn't wanna be
just another Wu-Tang affiliate.
You wanna achieve something.
[music fades out]
[RZA] Hey, yo.
You know, a game of chess is like life,
and sometimes, the outcome of your move
doesn't become clear until later.
[echoing clunk]
The idea for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,
I mean, I think the
the original, original seed
to do something that would last the ages,
something memorable,
I think we had that in Egypt.
So, what's up, yo?
You got the RZA right here.
We're in front of the Great Pyramids.
Give 'em a little view of that, homie.
[Tarik] We climbed the pyramids.
We sat on these humongous rocks.
Just kinda had, like, an epiphany
kinda just looking over the desert
and just how grand these things were.
Peace and blessings to the prophets,
and I wanna show respect to the Egyptians
for letting us come
and touch their sacred lands
and film it and document this.
Show 'em how far down we gotta go.
Show 'em the two security guards.
Let me see?
A'ight. We're gonna climb
our way back down
and bong boo-boo.
[Tarik] Sitting on
these amazing structures,
taking the moment in.
We said something like, "We should really
do something that is gonna last the ages."
It's just said in passing.
I think RZA even said,
like, "Well, Wu-Tang is forever."
Like, it's it's already set.
And I started thinking more and more
about it as time progressed.
I think, after that first solo album,
I was like [exhales]
"I don't think I wanna do this again."
Then I picked up more of a career
as a producer, which I far more enjoyed.
[hip-hop music playing]
For Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,
I started accumulating these beats.
RZA had recorded with me
on a couple of tracks.
I wish Ol' Dirty was here
Dirty was here
I wish Ol' Dirty was here
I was like, "Look, I would love
to record with the Wu-Tang Clan
and just do some songs,
maybe get some of the Killa Beez."
Killah Priest would be nice,
Shabazz would be dope.
And a friend of mine,
he was in the music industry
a little bit as well,
and he was like, "If you wanna make,
you know, a a record like that,
maybe we could find you an investor."
And he actually came back with a person
who had an amount of money to invest,
which I needed.
Six of the Clan members
had actually performed on my solo album
for free.
They had really come through for me.
I didn't wanna go back again
asking for handouts.
So, if I would have a budget,
and I can actually pay them
for their work
[hip-hop beat playing]
You know, RZA had changed his sound.
I was going to try and bring that back.
[RZA] Ringz got a ear
for the old Wu sound, you know?
That's where his ear's at.
[Tarik] RZA has always been listening
to what I make,
and he was like,
"You're approaching it the wrong way."
Like, "You should just record."
"Let go of the organizing,
and just go organic."
[cheering]
When I was approaching everyone to record,
I wasn't approaching them with the idea,
"We're makin' a Wu-Tang Clan record."
I wasn't making a Wu-Tang Clan record
in my mind.
I was making a record
with the Wu-Tang Clan.
So we just started to make music
over a period of six years.
[enchanting synth music playing]
[Jeremy] I did all the recordings
in Europe with the Clan.
Every time, everyone's reaction
was really enthusiastic.
Like, really, like, "Whoo!"
Yeah! Uh-huh.
[Tarik] There were themes to it,
there were concepts to it, skits.
For example, I had Cher. Right?
Cher sings on one of the songs.
But she also acts in another.
The Lady Melisandre in Game of Thrones.
"Just act as if you're talking to Raekwon,
and I will record Rae separately."
This shit is sounding like a
almost like a dream Wu-Tang Clan record.
Like, all our favorite Wu-Tang Killa Beez,
all the Clan members are on it.
And it was like, "Wow."
[rapping]
"Yo, Bazz,
I want you to get on seven songs."
"I'ma send you the beats right now."
-[beat playing]
-One take, bong. Next one, bong.
Next one, bong, bong, bong, bong.
Done. It was good. [blows raspberry]
They was blown away.
Ringz called me that day, "Yo, Bazz."
"You Michael Jordaned the whole album.
You killed everybody."
[blows landing]
["Shame on a Nigga"
by Wu-Tang Clan playing]
DJ Storm
[Tarik] I had responsibilities.
[baby giggles]
[Tarik] There was a lot of pressure
to get this done.
I hadn't made money for six years,
and the risk that I wasn't gonna make
any money this time either.
I genuinely don't remember
when Cyrus gets on board.
[Cyrus] In 2013,
uh I I got a fateful phone call,
um from a guy
who I've known since I was 19,
who I did some Had I
He was the first work experience
that I ever did, um uh
when I was 19,
and I'd always done bits of consultancy.
He's a big investor. He's got,
you know, a lot of things going on.
And he phoned me up, and he said that,
um, he'd invested in a music project.
The investor's a cool guy, huh?
He is a cool guy.
Because I'm not I'm not Mr. Accountant.
If you're appointing someone to watch
your cash, it probably would not be me.
-[bang]
-["Shame on a Nigga" continues]
[chuckling] Um
The fact that me and Tarik lived
in the same town
was a really obvious reason
to put us together.
There was a risk I would have to pay
the investment back if I failed.
[woman] And do you know how much it was?
I'm not gonna Yeah.
I do.
-[woman] Was it big?
-Yeah, it was big.
It was mid-six figures.
Wasn't an official Wu-Tang Clan album
at that point
to warrant that sort of level
of investment.
There was this whole drama of,
"All right, fuck.
It's now finished. What is this album?"
Is it a Cilvaringz album? How can it be?
Like, he's not even really rapping on it.
Like, it's a you know,
like, it's the entire Wu-Tang Clan,
all the fucking Killa you know,
half the Killa Beez and the affiliates,
done in that Wu-Tang sound,
and RZA's like, "Nah, you know, like,
this is a Wu-Tang album."
And now,
we need to actually, like, sell it.
I I remember when it came to him.
We were in Paris.
We were sitting at at a at a terrace.
He was he was drinking a Coke.
We were sitting there
eating crab or crpes or something,
and then he told me, "I have this idea."
The idea sounded ridiculous.
"You're crazy."
But I knew, he's gonna do this.
And he's gonna succeed.
[woman] What did he say exactly?
What was the idea?
What's what's this MP3 thing right there?
-It's like a It's like R2D2.
-Yeah.
[woman] In Napster,
people freely trade music with each other.
Some musicians call it piracy.
[funky hip-hop beat playing]
Music was not being valued anymore
like, the way I used to go
and buy records and live with that record.
It was a it was a fucking event
in my life, right?
And music, an album, would be
a soundtrack to a moment in your life.
Like, it stuck with you.
And here we are in a time where it's
accessible with the click of a button.
And the idea sparked,
"What if we sold a music album
as a piece of contemporary art?"
[gentle piano music playing]
A song can be duplicated digitally
endlessly,
and you'd still get the same thing.
The Mona Lisa can't.
You can have prints, but it's nowhere near
the value of the actual thing,
the one that the master touched and made.
Would that same idea
work and apply if we did it to music?
Sometimes I'd be like,
"Fuck, this is good."
"People gotta hear this shit.
I'm so proud of this," right?
All praises to the Most High
Clubs, and my bow tie
Smoke La, pass it off to the bloat fly
Sit back, relax, enjoy the boat ride
Keep a close eye, n, I'm multi
Get love off both sides
Black and white, it's goin' down
Call it Motown
Marvin Gaye
I'm a superstar modern day
Four broads plus Chardonnay
And then I'm like, "Yeah,
but it's only gonna live for a week,
and then its dead,
and then they move on to the next album."
[trumpet riff playing]
But I can do something
that's going to be remembered
and talked about.
You know. It's it's lunatic to think
that you're gonna sell
one single copy of an album
and make your investment back.
Investing in an album is
fucking expensive, usually,
and be like, "Hopefully it sells enough
to break even and then some."
With a single copy, that fucking risk,
it's never been done before.
It's lunatic. It's elitist.
It's you know,
it's a big fucking challenge,
and and it's a lotta unknowns.
So I lived with that idea for a long time.
RZA was you know,
he was being really considerate,
uh, and very patient with it all.
I remember him kinda going
[inhales sharply] Mm
Nowadays, that's the few college kids
downloading music.
You have the whole community
of music listeners
tryin' to get it for free.
Yet you're gon' pay 600 bucks for a phone?
You won't pay ten bucks for my album?
You gon' pay 200 bucks
for a pair of headphones
that's useless unless you got music in it.
But you won't pay $10 for the music.
The art of music
has been totally devalued.
It's become more like it's entitled.
I said, "What should we do with that?"
Like
He said, "Well,
we should just make it singular."
I was like, "Make it singular?
Let me meditate on that."
But I didn't decide to do it.
It wasn't until
the Wu did a quick European run,
and while we was working
on A Better Tomorrow,
we all got into a argument
about my direction.
"We'd rather Might as well"
"We should put that one out there,
the Cilvaringz one."
"That shit sound like a real Wu album."
"All the old beats
and old sounds and all that shit."
I do, I do, I do, I do
And eventually, I think
I think we decided, like, "Fuck it."
"Fuck it. A'ight, let's just do it."
"Go talk to the brothers."
Like, "You've gotta speak to
each and every one of them individually."
"See how they feel."
I'm calling Masta Killa.
I'm trying to call Meth.
Calling Raekwon. Calling Inspectah Deck.
Calling Ghostface. I'ma call GZA.
I'm gonna try and call U-God.
We gonna make
only one copy available of this record.
Gonna be the first privatized music album
in the world.
One owner in the world.
It's going to take the same trajectory
from creation to exhibition to sale
as an art piece.
This album is gonna be
the first album in the world
to tour festivals,
exhibition spaces, art galleries.
Why is a Andy Warhol painting
worth $60 million,
but a Kanye West album is only worth $10?
-[chimes chiming]
-[bleeping]
He called me and told me the whole idea.
He's gonna bring it to the to show RZA.
He said, "If this works, it's historic."
"I I I did what I set out to do."
We had a democratic majority
of the Clan members
that were down with the idea.
Only then did RZA make it
an official Wu-Tang album.
First thing was,
we've gotta commission a packaging
that is exquisite for this thing.
It needs to look the part.
[man] We met, I think, backstage
with some of the Wu-Tang for a concert,
and they explained to me
that they wanted to do this mad project,
and they wanted me
to do their album cover,
so I said,
"Sure, sounds crazy enough for me."
[hip-hop beat playing]
I explained to them my favorite song,
and it's one of the heaviest,
hardest ones.
It was called "Enter the Chamber." I
"7th Chamber," I think,
but it's the part two.
Part one, no. Part two, hot.
First point of call
was obviously the logo.
You had this beautiful W logo,
which was like the Batman thing.
I'm gonna make a beautiful silver case,
and I'm gonna have that as the highlight.
Then I had the concept that there would be
elements of surprise and mystery.
How the story was multifaceted
and multilayered,
I felt the box should reflect that,
that it should be a box
within a box within a box.
[dreamy music playing]
I mean, even the key
Okay?
You have here
You see the Wu key.
This is the key that unlocks the box.
It's even engraved with the Wu logo.
[Tarik] Now we had a crazy story,
we have the marketing tools for it,
we have the democratic majority vote
from the Clan members.
I immediately put together,
like, a sort of slight manifesto
that was like that went on the website.
It was more punchy. It was more, "We're
holding the music industry hostage."
And much more sort of
kind of culture jamming.
You know, KLF,
kind of music terrorism kinda thing.
[Tarik] So immediately
you start calling magazines
and newspapers, somebody
who will do an exclusive with you.
No one fuckin' believed this.
It was close to April Fools' Day,
I can't lie. Um
And then, uh
a journalist at Forbes got back.
Just pressing refresh on Google News.
You know, like, newest.
And, like, every 30 seconds,
things were just cascading in.
You know, everything,
Sydney Morning Herald,
New York Times, even Bloomberg.
You just name it.
Every name in the business.
It was brilliant, because it had
all come off that Forbes article.
Like, there hadn't been
a single word breathed to any of them.
It was a case
of journalists seeing something
and going,
"Oh, shit, we better get on that."
[soft string music playing]
There was no sales strategy.
The idea was to launch the press,
see what happened.
The 88-year non-commercialization clause
really came from, I think, an offer
that RZA received from a ketchup company,
wanted to buy the album
and were quite honest
about just using the hype
of the album to promote a ketchup bottle.
[squelch]
Slapping an 88-year non-commercialization
would make it more exclusive,
and people would really realize
whoever had it, it's really for them.
You can say it's a single-copy album.
You can say there's
an 88-year non-commercialization clause,
but what does any of that actually mean?
Buyers wanted to know, what
you know, what was hype,
what was just a sort of headline,
and what happened
when you got to the nitty-gritty.
And the answer was, we had no idea.
-[indistinct chatter]
-There was no model for this.
We had a conference in Tuscany,
in Florence. Me, RZA, and Tarik.
Concern was, "Right, what the hell
do we do if this doesn't sell?"
Every chance it won't sell.
What are we gonna do? Just look like mugs?
[trumpet plays two notes]
A game of chess
is like a sword fight.
You gotta think ahead before you move.
[trumpet playing melody]
Did Cyrus mention to you about Plan B?
-[upbeat music playing]
-[coin spinning]
Tarik had come up with this Plan B
for if this thing didn't sell.
We would fake a sale.
Essentially, you can't commercialize
the music.
So we invent a buyer character.
Fake buyer.
-[auctioneer speaks indistinctly]
-[gavel bangs]
Then this buyer character
would find a loophole in our contract.
And the loophole was
there were certain merchandising rights.
Okay, I'm not allowed to sell this record,
but if I can sell empty CDs
with a real cover,
and I sell X amount for X price
-and recoup my investment
-[cash register dings]
Then the music would be released for free.
[Tarik] Each of you
who've bought the record
then get the music sent to them.
You can burn it onto your CD,
and this is a way
to get the record to the people,
and make sure everybody
in the Clan got paid on top
[crowd cheering]
and now you're holding a relic
that in itself is part
of a legendary story.
And at the end, there'd be a reveal.
"Actually, it was us all along,"
kinda thing, you know,
and he had he even had,
like, the video edit, again,
taken from The Usual Suspects,
when the journalist puts it all together
on the board and drops his coffee cup.
He had the whole thing worked out
with, like, RZA in the car with the box.
And, like, it was j it was it was solid.
That was reasonably solid.
Okay? Because we did need a plan.
-[man 1] I work for Keyser Sze.
-[man 2] Convince me.
Convince me. Convince me.
Then we got this call
from a company called Paddle8.
Looked them up, and they were sort of
backed by Damien Hirst and Jay Joplin,
and it was all very art auction house
for the Uber age.
[percussive beat playing]
Cyrus Bozorgmehr was
like a folkloric rogue
and legend from
from my my senior-school days.
[laughter]
He'd been to the same school as me.
I was slightly nervous about that.
You know, I'd made myself fairly unpopular
and got myself thrown out.
Paddle8 wanted to do an exhibition,
get the music critics in.
I was behind that. Tarik was nervous.
I was like, "At some point, you can't
just keep hiding this behind a curtain."
Then one day,
MoMA PS1 wanna do it.
-["Walking In Memphis" playing]
-And that is the Tate Modern of New York.
You know, that
you know, that was that was huge.
Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down
In the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain
-[crashing drums and cymbals]
-[bongos playing]
[Tarik] Set off from Morocco with the box
and the 13-minute sampler of the album
on my laptop.
Got to New York.
[Cyrus] Get off the plane.
The minute we got to passport control,
Tarik is just just taken. Just snared.
"You need to go
with this person right here."
I go over to customs. "Have you anything
to declare?" I'm like, "Yeah."
"There's three silver boxes here."
"But you've got paperwork
for one cedar and leather box."
Two, three hours later, I come out,
and Cyrus is having trouble with the box.
"What the hell is in here
that is worth millions?"
"Can you open it, please?"
"Dude, key. Key to the box."
And he was like [gasps]
He'd taken the box
to Yahya to have it cleaned,
and the key hadn't made it back out
with the box.
So, eventually, they had to, like,
put it through this new type of scanner
to make sure.
I think the story was so ludicrous
that they believed us,
and, um we were let go.
We got to the hotel.
Take my backpack off,
I get everything ready for tomorrow.
"Where the fuck is my computer?"
And I'm looking.
Like, my computer's, like, gone.
I'm like, "Fuck."
You Where is your I don't know.
Where's your fucking laptop, man?
So now we have the box back but no music.
[Tarik] Rushing back to JFK.
No joy. Went back.
Sort of had an incredibly depressed,
panicking night.
Twenty-four hours later,
third visit to JFK,
it materialized.
It was up to them to get the album,
you know, into the States.
First we lost the box, got it back,
the music, got it back, then we lost RZA.
You got the RZA right here.
Maybe we hadn't bought
the right the right class of seat.
So anyway, I remember he had issues.
He stormed off the flight.
Paddle8 are trying
to book him a private jet.
Anything. Fucking anything.
Finally, he got put on some red-eye.
The very first interaction, actually,
was probably a little frosty.
"Who's this trying to put me
at the back of the plane
rather than the front of the plane,"
and, you know,
"Does he does he understand
who I am, what I represent?"
[Tarik] We'd had the box
by itself with two security guards.
[Cyrus] It's like Arab sheikhs,
you know, kind of thing.
You've got, like,
Leonardo DiCaprio's kind of art buyer,
journalists from all
the major publications,
and then you've got all these
hip-hop fans, so really bizarre vibe.
[sedate piano music playing]
[RZA] In 2014, we made a announcement
that resonated throughout the world.
There would be a new Wu-Tang Clan album,
entitled Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,
but only one copy would ever exist.
In doing this announcement,
we reclaim the idea
that recorded music
should be regarded as a work of art.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
is what I consider
a seal to a musical legacy.
It's a unique work of art,
and it's an urgent statement
for our times.
But for more than anything,
I think this idea, this concept,
will act as inspiration for other artists.
[Tarik] In a few minutes,
we'll be playing you 13 minutes
of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
The first and last time
any music from this work
will be heard by anyone
besides the eventual collector
for at least a period of 88 years.
[enchanting string music playing]
[Tarik] They were mostly silent.
Just kinda absorbing it, letting it go in.
[Cyrus] There was no cheering,
there was no whooping
'cause it all felt a bit weird.
It was there was some sort of
tentative applause afterwards.
[Alexander] The snippet of the album
that was played had wowed everyone.
[Cyrus] It was such a sigh of relief.
The reviews were monumentally positive.
[Tarik] The album reminded them
of Wu-Tang Forever, so we were chuffed.
We were like, "Wow."
[Cyrus] Then dinner
at Alexander Gilkes's place,
and it was all very kind of high end,
high society.
And RZA's just like,
"I'm gonna hit up my friend the monk."
[trumpet playing]
It's, like, 1 a.m. on a Saturday night.
I'm like, "Okay, what's that code for?"
Like, do you know what I mean?
Is this, like, some sort of,
you know, Marsellus Wallace character?
Like, you know, are we scoring some coke?
Like, what's happening?
Like, what is the monk?
It definitely did not
The last thing I expected it to be
was an actual fucking monk.
-[indistinct chatter]
-["Bring da Ruckus" playing]
Bring da motherfuckin' ruckus!
Stabbin' up the pad with the vocab
Crabs
I do remember we've partied many times.
You know, for example, Merry Christmas.
Happy Birthday, Happy New Year.
-[men] Danger!
-[cheering]
[Cyrus] Shifu then very proudly unbelts
these just ridiculous bottles
of Chinese spirits.
Some music comes on the thing.
I'm getting increasingly reckless
with my alcohol consumption.
And I believe I challenge RZA
to a kung-fu fight,
which he very generously warded off
some of my less threatening blows.
And I notice that there are these guys
jumping this traffic cone thing.
[Tarik] And Cyrus got it in his head,
"I can do that too."
And I was like, "Bro." Like, "No."
[people screaming, laughing]
[Cyrus] Everyone is howling with laughter.
Tarik is doubled over.
He's not even trying to help.
RZA told me. He said, "Someone broke
their leg, Shifu." I said, "What?"
[Cyrus] And just as a straight-up flex,
Shifu just puts his leg behind his head.
[gentle piano music playing]
[Shi Yan Ming] Life's just like music.
Rhythms. Life sometimes goes down.
Sometimes goes up.
That's why always encourage yourself.
Challenge yourself.
Don't stop your life.
Don't stop the rhythms.
Yeah. Smooth. Nicely.
Understand, sometimes goes down
a little bit. That's normal.
Sometimes goes up.
Yeah, don't back up.
Don't stop yourself.
Don't give up.
Continue. Encourage yourself.
Challenge yourself.
Life is fighting. Fight for it.
[Cyrus] The fact that the press were
so on board was brilliant.
[notification tweet]
And that's why it was such a shame
that the mention of this 88-year
non-commercialization clause
was put out a day later.
F that album. F it.
If that's what they doin', F it.
I'm tired of the gimmicks. And when someb
It's never us comin' with the gimmicks.
It's always somebody on the outside.
A Bee Wu guy or somebody like that.
Yes, I'm discrediting Cilvaringz,
but I'm not discrediting the product.
I'm just discrediting him
and the way he made his move.
Can't stand Cilvaringz, by the way.
-[Tarik] Aw, man.
-Slums of Shaolin
Why destroy my character
and reputation in the press? Like
You're Superman, bro.
You're the most popular,
most visible, most relevant.
U-God, Ghostface Killah
And the Method Man
M-E-T-H-O-D Man
M-E-T-H-O-D Man
[Tarik] You're larger than life.
Man, hey, you
Get off my cloud, you don't know
[Tarik] I did five tours with Meth.
-The Method Man
-[music stops]
[thunder rumbling]
Ladies and gentlemen,
give it up one time for Cilvaringz.
[laughing]
[somber string music playing]
[Tarik] Growing up, I don't remember
being invited to any birthdays.
And when I had a birthday of my own,
I invited all the popular boys from class.
My mom had made a big effort.
Cake and cups, confetti, balloons.
But only my Turkish friend Emrah
showed up.
Um I don't know how I felt about it.
I probably just dealt with it.
[woman] It's a phrase you use often,
like, "I just dealt with it."
What does that mean?
Same with, like, with the sexual abuse.
You hear the stories of people
who have trauma from it all their lives,
and it has an effect
on them some certain way, right,
where it haunts them.
Never haunted me.
The racism never haunted me.
It almost boosts, for me at least,
it kind of boosts your confidence
It kind of boosts your strength,
kinda like,
nothing can hurt me in that sense.
[woman] Why do you think you've got
more resilience than other people?
-[music fades out]
-No idea.
[exhales forcefully]
I wouldn't know, Jo.
I have no idea.
I just think it's maybe part
of my character, just this
Maybe I'm a sociopath. [chuckles]
No, I mean. I feel emotion to people,
and and and, you know,
I feel for people's pain and and trauma
and everything they go through,
but it's almost, like, not for me.
-Not for my own self.
-[gentle music playing]
[Jo] You don't feel emotion for yourself?
Nah, just like, "Get on with it, bro."
Like, "Fuck this shit."
[mouse clicking]
[Cyrus] He's taking hordes of abuse.
A lot of it racist, as well.
There's a lot of terrorism things going on
'cause he's Arab.
You know people say
never read your reviews?
Yeah, he read all his reviews.
He he doesn't get angry.
He doesn't get anxious.
Uh he doesn't get sad.
Blink and it's unemotional.
But it's not. It's not.
There is emotion there.
There is pride, there is hurt there.
There is all of those things.
They're just kept very
they're just kept
very well compartmentalized
and permanently intellectualized.
He is not looking to be loved,
and I think that's really unusual.
Because most people to some deg
I certainly am.
To some degree, people are looking,
especially when they interact publicly
You're really hurt when you think
people have misunderstood you.
Tarik doesn't get hurt like that. Um
It's both a feature and a flaw,
in the sense that it keeps him going,
it keeps that self-belief powered,
it keeps him stable,
but it's a flaw because he can't see
when that's going to lead him off a cliff.
And also he has a real tendency
for multilayered plans
that no one can keep up with.
The Wu-Tang Clan members
that did have press runs
all spoke in a positive way about it.
Cilvaringz, he's a, um, Wu-Tang protg.
One of the producers
top producers in the crew.
And, um he came with the idea,
and he gave everybody a call,
and next thing you know,
all I know is it's in the makings,
and, you know, and it's being auctioned.
You know, I played my part.
Everybody played they part.
And he just put it together.
[music playing tinnily through laptop]
-You heard Cher at the end, right?
-I heard Cher on it, yeah.
It's crazy, right?
Those two on the album,
they're two of my favorites.
We're back in the old school.
Even "Rainy Dayz."
You got you got it right there.
By the time this product was finished,
it sounded like a
that it could have been me
back in 36 Chamber era. You know?
We're checking that one-copy album out.
What happened with that, man?
It's in the middle of being sold now.
We're talking to the six last clients.
Yeah?
All that is happening
outside of the public eye.
We didn't wanna have it
The clients didn't want it
to play out in the media.
[Tarik] We had a few interested parties.
I'm not allowed to tell you who.
Some very rich and famous.
Some self-made.
[RZA] It was a few different billionaires
that was gonna buy this album.
A guy named, uh, Mike Skareli.
and he was probably the poorest
amongst them.
He only worth
about 200 million at the time.
[Tarik] Albanian. We were told
his parents were janitors.
Still, he was doing really well,
but, you know, he came from
-Self-made man.
-[trumpet melody playing]
He I think he he liked him, he liked
his background, where he came from.
Said, you know,
"I think we should go with this guy."
[woman] Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
has been purchased
by an anonymous American buyer for, quote,
an undisclosed figure in the millions.
[Tarik] And then he paid the deposit,
and then we had until October 8th,
octo, eight, 88,
um to deliver the record.
[jazz trumpet playing
over sweeping strings]
-[music stops]
-[thunder rumbling]
[dramatic orchestral music playing]
[Tarik] I was driving in town here
and Cyrus calls me, super panicked,
and he's like, "Come to my house now."
"That guy Martin?"
"He's in the news.
He's done some bad shit."
[Cyrus] Fuck.
Imagine for a moment, popping a pill
before bed that costs about $13.50.
Now, imagine waking up the next morning
to find that the price
of the same pill jumped to $750 overnight.
That is just what happened to one drug.
Martin Shkreli, in response
to all of this attention
and doctors and patient groups
saying they can't access this drug,
are you gonna change the price?
-No.
-[distorted devilish laugh]
[Tarik] He's raising the price
on Daraprim,
which is a drug that treats toxoplasmosis
in HIV and cancer patients.
And we wanted to figure out,
was there a way to to nullify the sale?
There was no there was no path out.
I think someone at Paddle8
kindly asked him to,
"Could you please
not reveal yourself yet?"
[mournful music playing]
RZA and I both felt that it was important
to give some of the proceeds to charity.
We had to deliver the album in October.
-So I think we felt, like, it'll die down.
-[music fades]
Who do you think buys art on the phone
when they call
into Christie's and Sotheby's?
You think it's those lovely people
sitting in the room
or some evil bastard?
Of course.
[Tarik] He's quite the sexy man,
as you can see.
This is the room where it all happened.
Right here in Marrakesh.
Many discussions at that table.
Many on those couches right there.
[Cyrus] We got a rickety old CD burner
from the Marrakesh Medina,
from some sort of,
you know, like, generic electronics shop.
Plugged it into my laptop, right?
Burnt it on iTunes.
Once it got burnt,
that then got sort of ritually deleted,
and then it was that was it.
-[Jo] So he has no copy?
-No.
This one-off album y'all doing?
As a lifelong Wu-Tang fan,
that's not right, man.
You can't just do one album
and throw it to the highest bidder.
What about us, the regular consumer
that can't afford such things?
[Tarik] When it did sell
to Martin Shkreli,
I still wanted to find a way
to get the record to the people.
Tarik came up with the idea
of pitching Plan B to Martin.
It certainly wasn't on the handover day.
It was two, three weeks before.
And I was low-key hoping to just,
sometimes he says stuff,
to just talk him out of it
gently beforehand.
[Tarik] Now we had a buyer.
Martin Shkreli.
Instead of faking a buyer, we could try
to get Martin to enact Plan B.
We tell him the loophole.
Create a bit of theater.
And ultimately still get
the album to the fans.
[crowd cheering]
"Okay, y'all are so angry with me
for having this record."
"Fine."
"Let's test how much
you really wanted to pay for this record."
Would people buy it
from the devil himself?
If everyone is claiming
that they want this album,
that it's unfair
they don't get access to this album,
how far would they go to listen to it?
Would they buy it off somebody that evil?
Now, I didn't think that was
a particularly interesting experiment.
[Tarik] Cyrus couldn't see it. He was,
like, pacing around, touching his face.
Sweating and shit.
He was like, "Nah, man."
[Cyrus] Why are we opening Pandora's Box?
Why are we pushing the envelope,
and why are we doing something that I felt
really morally uncomfortable with?
This is not theater. This is madness.
Tarik didn't listen to me,
and he listens to my advice
almost all the time.
You know, he takes it on board,
but, like, this is the first time
he was absolutely like,
"I'm going my own way."
[Tarik] When I told RZA about it,
he had to think really long about it. Um
So he was like, "Yo, you know,
we can try."
As long as the end goal was that the fans
would get their hands on the music.
[RZA] I gotta confess this,
'cause I don't talk about this a lot.
This guy shows up on the news
as the evilest man in the world.
And I did say this to him, though.
I said, "Listen, Martin."
"You doing a lot of bad things, bro.
The Wu-Tang is good, okay?"
"If I was you, I would take
this album and do something good with it,"
meaning he could give it to the people.
[soft piano music playing]
[Cyrus] So we'd done the handover
in the morning.
Tarik basically pitches Martin Plan B,
and Martin loved it.
Martin just was couldn't
like, practically hugged Tarik.
[thunder crashes]
[woman] The owner
of the most expensive album ever
has finally been revealed.
Turing CEO Martin Shkreli.
[Tarik] It was it was mad.
Everything you can imagine be said
was said.
So a lot of blaming,
a lot of blood-money accusations.
"Fuck them. Fuck Cilvaringz."
"Fuck everybody, but Fuck the Clan."
[Cyrus] Shortly thereafter,
this guy from Philadelphia
just invented this Bill Murray clause
from the contract
that essentially said
that if the Wu-Tang Clan and Bill Murray
were to steal this album back,
it would basically revert
to their previous ownership.
[Tarik] It was a fucking tweet.
The Independent in the UK
thought it was real
and said, "This is an actual clause."
Then other media started picking it up.
Apparently, Bill Murray or any member,
any members of Wu-Tang
can go and steal it and, uh you know,
not face any criminal charges, apparently.
[Cyrus] People wrote skits
and made animations.
So perfect, 'cause Bill Murray
had actually been in a film
with RZA at one point.
[Tarik] It's almost like
people wanted it to be real.
Right? They wanted it to be true.
So I was like, "We should get Bill Murray
to play a part."
So I call Martin.
I'm like, "Yo, what if,
before all this
'I find a loophole thing' that we do,
I try to see if some of the guys
wanna come in with RZA and Bill Murray
and walk into your house
while you're livestreaming?"
This is a robbery. This is a robbery.
[Tarik] "We beat you up. We walk around
the fucking room looking for the album."
"We find all kinds of weird shit,
but we don't find the album."
"And then we leave, and you have
Bill Murray coming into the camera."
"We'll make it a whole theater play."
"And as this is livestreaming,
it will make its way into the world,
and it's gonna be this big announcement."
"You're gonna then come back
to your senses, bruised up."
And he was like,
"You gotta fuck me up really bad."
"I gotta be bloody.
You gotta make it real."
And I was like, "Well"
And that we'll use as the announcement
for Martin Shkreli's going to say,
"Y'all bitching about the record?
All right. Here we go."
"This is the challenge."
And I think I was
a bit too married to the to the idea
'cause any normally,
logically thinking person
could see issues with Martin Shkreli.
[tense music playing]
So the first thing we set up
is a bit of a Twitter beef,
I think it was,
where Martin would say
something, uh condescending,
and, you know, uh RZA would answer him.
But Martin just didn't get the memo
on, like, what a script was.
So the first thing he does, he sits down
with an interview with HipHopDX
and just slays RZA,
just absolutely coats him in slurry.
I think RZA called me and was like,
"Yo, this dude is This ain't it."
"I'm getting calls, bro, from, like"
And, um, Cyrus is like, "See? See?"
[man] Ghost and Killa,
I gotta ask you guys, man.
You guys know that guy that bought
your CD for $2 million at the auction?
Yeah, that shhead.
I don't even know him, but when I heard
what he did with the AIDS like that
That's not right.
Never say some dumb again.
This album? This Shaolin? I'm gonna erase
all your from this album.
Right here, man. Look here.
I'm gonna erase you
from the record books of rap.
You can never erase me from it.
I am history.
He's an old man. You saw me.
You saw my boys. I'm a young man.
A man with a 12-year-old body.
Because he was in the Wu-Tang Clan
20 years ago doesn't make him tough.
If you was my son, I'd whip your ass.
I butter your bread. You understand me?
Michael Jackson-nose kid.
-He should be afraid.
-What are you gonna do?
-[echoing bang]
-[echoing devilish laugh]
The most hated man in America.
He is free on $5 million bond this morning
after being arrested for fraud.
[Cyrus] When he actually got arrested
by the FBI
for securities fraud,
personally, I was kind of relieved,
'cause the whole thing
was spiraling so wildly out of control.
He gets out,
and he said that they found replica AK-47s
at his apartment
and that he'd been planning
to make another video that night.
[Tarik] Gonna record a message
for the Wu-Tang Clan
and tell them to be ready
to join their brother, ODB, in heaven.
And I'm, like, hearing that,
I'm like, "Bro. No, no, no, no."
Like, "Don't. Oh, God."
In my mind, I was like, "Thank God
this motherfucker got arrested."
Just just wow.
It's like, "Tarik, you know,
I mean, you're, like, rationally crazy."
"Like, this guy's crazy crazy.
Like, you know?"
I didn't see it, and I was like,
"Maybe I wanted it to play out so much,
because I wanted
to get the record to the people,
and I wanted to pull some
Usual Suspects type of, you know, trick."
[Cyrus] Congress were making memes
with a Wu logo like this
and a bottle of Daraprim like this,
you know?
[Tarik] The FBI tweeted about the album,
which was amazing,
saying, "Martin Shkreli arrested."
"Unfortunately,
we did not take the Wu-Tang Clan album."
And it became
their biggest tweet of that time.
[notification tweets]
And everybody was like,
"Bro, you had, you know, one job."
It was to get the fucking record back.
For most of his 34 years of life,
Martin Shkreli was recognized
for his genius,
while today, the falsehoods
of that persona cost him
in the form
of a seven-year prison sentence.
[Tarik] He got a seven-point-something
million-dollar judgment against him.
They took, I think, a Picasso drawing.
They took a Turing machine.
He had one of two machines that were used
to break the Nazi code in the World War.
He had the Wu-Tang album.
The Wu-Tang album was the most valuable.
I'm like, "Really? More than the Picasso?"
That's some shit.
They're like, "Well, it's only a drawing."
I'm like, "But it's still Picasso."
My happiest moment was when it disappeared
into the vaults of the Justice Department.
For me, it was like that scene
at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark,
where they just put the Ark
into this sort of anonymous box
in a sort of warehouse,
and this just thing of magic is just lost
and may get rediscovered
in 100 years or something.
I genuinely felt
that, you know,
somehow in the age of the inevitable leak,
this box had kept its secrets,
and I was deligh I was like
let's just I want the mystery to run.
[intriguing brass music playing]
[music fades out]
I hope the Feds wanna give us back
our record. [laughing]
That'd be kinda cool
if I could get my record back, man,
so it could generate some sales
for my family.
-Okay.
-You know what I mean? Or or
They can keep it in a museum,
and we share the proceeds or something.
-Okay.
-The Feds get their their piece.
And we get our piece.
The album, you know,
we would all be for it,
and we would be supportive of it,
you know, if the proper channels were met.
[Jo] And those channels would've been?
To break everybody off appropriately.
-[Jo] Right.
-For their participation in the project.
[Jo] Right.
I don't think the bulk of any money
at any point went to Tarik and RZA.
You have to bear in mind
that there was a sizable investment
with a sizable chunk to pay back.
There was a finder's fee
for the guy that brought in the investor.
There were costs
that exceeded the album's creation.
Whatever that anyone thinks is the number,
chop it down by at least two-thirds,
I would say,
to actually get somewhere real.
It was not life-changing money at all.
[Jo] If it had been released
the normal way,
it is the hit of the century,
would the Clan have seen
more money in royalties or not?
I'm sure, but what would've been missing
is the Guinness Book World Records,
the the the number one expensive album
in the
The historic part
that is generating right now
would be missing.
So is that worth more than money,
or money is worth more than that?
He sent out these tracks.
"I need you to spit on this,"
and he paid brothers. Okay.
Royalties. However that works.
That works itself out. Publishing.
But we didn't hear
anything else after that
until we heard, "This is a single album,
and we're selling it auctioned," and
So brothers is scratching their heads,
like, "Wait a minute. Hold up."
If I knew that's what this was gon' be,
maybe I would have been more artistic
because I know where we're going,
or I would've took more time
and wouldn't have approached it
as a guest appearance.
I would have approached it
as a Wu-Tang project.
We didn't know it was a Wu-Tang project
until it was.
They were paid
in a time when they were recording for me.
Had they known
that this was a Wu-Tang Clan record,
then they would have charged differently,
which is logical.
But they didn't know,
because I didn't know.
A long time since we recorded that shit,
them verses.
Sad part is the fans
don't even get to hear that shit.
That would've been dope
if the supervillain didn't get ahold
Dr. Doom didn't get ahold of the shit.
Yeah.
And he was playing a part,
which turned it into a circus.
The fans, at least let them hear it.
Just give it to 'em by now.
After all this shit?
You know what I'm sayin'?
-[gentle music playing]
-[ice clinking]
[Cappadonna] I'm not here
to judge anybody. I'm not
I just wanna make good music and have fun.
[Jo] Mm-hmm.
I mean, the world's already being judged,
and you don't wanna get caught up
in the whirlwind.
You know, you wanna be leaning towards
as much of the positive side as possible.
Um and that's it.
You know, you do positive things,
and positive things, uh, come your way.
I would do things differently if I could,
but I don't regret them.
Like, I would call the Clan and be like,
"Hey, this 88-year thing" You know?
Uh you know, I'm not
I'm not completely innocent
in the whole shit.
Like, I could've,
obviously, done things much better.
Much clearer. Communicate them clearer.
Try harder to reach this person. You know?
There's loads of shit
you could've done better.
-But I don't regret it.
-[music fades]
You do things in the moment,
with the time you got
or whatever's going on,
and you try to make the best decisions
that you can.
[Jo] Do you think the album is
the highlight of your career,
or do you think it destroyed your career?
I have to wonder
whether I really had a career,
to say whether my career was destroyed.
[dreamy music playing]
Just thinking back,
the lady with the dog,
I wouldn't mind
about her validation or acceptance.
I I really couldn't care.
I needed that validation
from those that matter.
When I'm going through the archive,
and I'm going back through all those tapes
and going back
to the story of wanting to be there,
I see the pictures of us young,
big dreams,
and then, at the same time,
I'm on my other computer,
looking at me and RZA chilling
and having fun,
kinda snapping and joking
like it's the most normal thing.
I'm sitting there still today,
being like, "This is fucking ludicrous."
All right, like, "This is weird."
That guy and those Clan guys,
like, I pretty much
almost worshiped as a young kid.
It's like, this is
this is almost not real.
Like, is it really real?
'Cause it's never really sunk in.
-And I don't think I've ever--
-[Jo] What would make it real?
I don't necessarily need it to be real.
[car horns honking]
[Raekwon] It was great for the culture.
Period.
[man] Yeah.
[Raekwon] It was a good thing,
and it was a weird thing.
-[man] Yeah.
-It was good, though.
We are displaying art.
Yeah, this has been art.
[woman] The unreleased Wu-Tang Clan album
purchased by jailed drug company executive
Martin Shkreli
was sold by the US Government on Tuesday.
[music fades out]
[wistful music playing]
[RZA] It was in the wrong hands,
in all reality.
This album sat
in the Department of Justice
for a couple of years, yo.
Now that it's out of their hands,
this thing's gonna have a life of its own.
Like a child, like a child.
You give birth to a child,
but he's gonna grow,
and he's gonna life his life.
He's gonna leave the crib one day,
get married, and do what he do.
Some of us gonna like the life.
Some of us gonna hate the life.
Some of us gonna wanna attach to it
or detach from it.
And it's it's doing it.
It's doing exactly that.
Now that PleasrDAO has it,
there's a opportunity
that a lot of these beautiful ideas
of what this art can be
I think the possibilities are there now.
It should be treated
like a piece of art, right?
Like like Mona Lisa.
If you wanna see that,
you have to go to the Louvre in France.
You can go, and you go look at it
and see it in a physical form.
You can't see it
you can't get it at home.
You can't get it on your phone.
Yo, you really want this?
You gotta go to the location
and experience it.
That's what I want for this record.
To get to go
and sit down and experience it,
and then go home.
Go home after that,
and talk about it, think about it,
and and and remember
what you saw, seen, and heard.
My student, Cilvaringz,
I let him into the temple,
the Wu world, and let him sit by the door.
I gave him a lot of trust.
Maybe too much.
It was almost like
my student challenged me.
But yet,
doing something in the cause
of what he believed
was the right cause of Wu-Tang.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
is a dream of a fan.
That's the greatest feeling,
is for a fan to finally realize his dream
and meet the people he admired,
become his peers.
[Jo] Mm-hmm.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
is that story for Cilvaringz.
But the idea of music being art,
of music being a work of art
and a piece of art,
that's what this is all about.
[wistful music builds]
[Tarik] I think that's a
I think that's a good enough story.
[music fades out]
Bong, motherfucking bong.
All praises to the Most High
Clubs, and my bow tie
Smoke La, pass it off to the bloat fly
Sit back, relax, enjoy the boat ride
Keep a close eye, n, I'm multi
[music stops]
All praises to the Most High
Clubs, and my bow tie
Smoke La, pass it off to the bloat fly
Sit back, relax, enjoy the boat ride
Keep a close eye, n, I'm multi
Get love off both sides
Black and white, it's goin' down
Call it Motown
Marvin Gaye
I'm a superstar modern day
Four broads plus Chardonnay
I be tossing, enforcing
My style is awesome
I'm causing more Family Feuds
Than Richard Dawson
And the survey said, "You're dead"
Fatal Flying Guillotine chops
Off your fucking head
MZA, "Who is that?"
Ayo, the Wu is back
Making niggas go, "Bo! Bo!"
Like I'm Super Cat
Me fear no one
Oh, no, here come
The Wu-Tang shogun
Killer to the eardrum
Put the needle to the groove
I gets rude
And I'm forced to fuck it up
My style carries like a pickup truck
Cross the clear blue yonder
Sea to shining sea
I slam tracks
Like quarterback sacks from LT
Now, why try and test the Rebel INS?
Blessed since the birth
I earth-slam your best
'Cause I bake the cake
Then take the cake
And eat it too with my crew
While we head state to state
And if you want beef
Then bring the ruckus
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' to fuck wit
Straight from the motherfucking slums
That's busted
Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' to fuck wit
Ha
Lebanon
Step up, boy
Represent
Chop his head off, kid
The Meth will come out tomorrow
Styles, get busy, bizarre, bizarro
Flow with more Afro than Rollo
Coming to a fork in the road
Which way to go? Just follow
Mef is the legend
Niggas is Sleepy Hollow
In fact, I'm a hard act to follow
I dealt for dolo
Bogart coming on through
Niggas is like, "Oh, my God, not you"
Yes, I come to get a slice
Of the punk and the pie
Rather do than die
Check my flava
Coming from the RZA
Which is short for the Razor
Who make me reminisce true
Like dj vu
I'm rubber, niggas is like glue
Whatever you say rubs off me
Sticks to you
[music fades]