Netflix has released The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable, a documentary about Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the single-copy Wu-Tang Clan album, and the debate over what music is worth.
RZA, the founder of Wu-Tang Clan, is an executive producer on The Disciple, which follows one fan’s path from admiration to helping create the album.
“I think art always makes its appearance when time is ready,” RZA told AfroTech Culture. “I think the time is perfect, and I think the idea of the story of someone with a dream being able to touch that dream and bring it to reality. I think it’s a story that is always relevant, and it feels like maybe we haven’t had a story like that in a while, and here we go, right on time.”
Understanding the value of hip-hop
In 2023, hip-hop celebrated its 50th anniversary, and in a previous story, AfroTech examined its influence.
The moment began with DJ Kool Herc’s back-to-school jam at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in New York’s Bronx, and today it is estimated to be worth about $25 billion annually.
When RZA, alongside Wu-Tang Killa Beez member Cilvaringz (Tarik Azzougarh), began working on the group’s seventh studio album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the goal was to fight back against what they believed to be the devaluation of music amid the rise of streaming.
Produced as a single physical art piece rather than a mass-market commercial product, the project is compared to the Mona Lisa throughout the documentary, a work with its own folklore that outlives the artist.
Now, 11 years later, The Disciple explores the story of how the album took on a life of its own, driven by one wealthy buyer, Martin Shkreli, an FBI investigation, and limited access to the album.
“The Mona Lisa, being like the old Egyptian scepter, that was kind of my analogy early on,” RZA recalled. “It was a couple of things that were happening simultaneously, but Once Upon A Time, we got to get into it, and it was like that became the spearhead of that movement of that fight back against the devaluing of music. The fight back against the popcorn version of everything that was happening in our industry at the time, and then also trying to find something that was a sacred identity that could exist.”
He added, “So all that was part of a plan, but once it got into the world, of course, it almost took on a life of its own, right? And art does that. Your album, your movie, it will eventually become its own thing, and people will hear and see different things about it. One thing that’s not in the documentary that’s interesting is [that] we all know that Martin Shkreli buys this album. But we didn’t talk about why he bought it. When we played the 13 minutes at MoMA, he was there, and he heard something in the lyrics of that small piece that made him want it, and that’s what he told me. And he quoted; he said Raekwon said something to him in the lyrics that he heard, that magnetized him to, like, ‘I want to own this thing,’ and that’s how art is.”
Did Wu-Tang’s argument land? Looking at the economics of music today
In 2015, the industry was handing music to streaming platforms for fractions of a penny. Wu-Tang’s single-copy album directly countered that.
“I think there’s been some improvements since 2015, and you see that happening,” said RZA. “I don’t know if it’s because the quantity has increased, because in 2015, even though it was being handed to the streamers, the consumer wasn’t all engaged in the streaming process. So now there are so many consumers, and it’s a worldwide market. I think there has been some leveraging of economics where artists can do it better than in 2015. But do we still need to find a way to quantify the value? Yes. The value has not been fully quantified, and I think this documentary will potentially re-inspire that conversation. SiriusXM and radio stations are actually traditionally paying artists close to their traditional amount, and there’s a new reemergence of people listening and tuning in, so that’s a cool thing.”
“Then, when you look at Netflix, for instance, being able to make it real, make it live, like TV, I think that’s going to be another change for artists, music, and film, whereas the value will tick up as well. It’s always a fight to make sure artists and creators are compensated for their time, because it takes time and resources to create. Even though you say, ‘Oh, I can do it on my phone,’ it still takes time, and the phone itself is still a one-thousand-dollar investment. Hopefully, we’ll get to a point where the average musician can make a living from his music. To be able to maintain his family and continue to bring great art to the world, and not have to sacrifice the art because of economics.”
The Disciple is now streaming on Netflix.
