A proper documentary about the Wu-Tang Clan would be impossible given the group’s rapidly expanding membership and complex history of feuds, influences, and solo records. Its emergence in the early-1990s meant that there’s a substantial amount of archive footage available, but not enough solid records to verify some of the more contentious incidents; one of the most entertaining components of the Wu-Tang legacy is that its veterans will each describe a slightly different version of the same events. The mythology of Wu-Tang’s formation and its eclectic concept albums (many of which incorporated kung fu and martial arts cinema) made for such a compelling study in the pre-Internet era that it’s no wonder that the group was a gateway for many hip-hop fans.
The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable is ostensibly about Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a studio album of which only one copy was ever released. The fate of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’s ownership is a key to the most significant pressure points in the music industry over the past 20 years, but to tell the story fully there was a need for context regarding its inception and reception. The necessary participant was Tarik Azzougarh, the Dutch-Moroccan rapper known as “Cilvaringz,” who was the brainchild behind the selective release strategy that resulted in catastrophe. Unfortunately, Cilvaringz is the only subject in The Disciple who’s provided any testimony of value, and the result is a one-sided documentary with mixed messages.
Cilvaringz’s involvement in Wu-Tang is both a remarkable, inspirational story of wish fulfillment and a foreboding sign of how monstrous fan culture would become. Born in the Netherlands, Cilvaringz grew up as a Wu-Tang obsessive and developed his own work alongside a group of childhood friends. His work ethic is undeniable, and it was rewarded in 1997 when he was brought onstage during the Wu-Tang Forever tour in Amsterdam and allowed to showcase his lyrics alongside Ol' Dirty Bastard and Method Man. It’s the type of freestyle showcase experience that every hip-hop fan has dreamed about, and the most incredible aspect is that it spawned a lifelong partnership. Cilvaringz eventually reconnected with RZA, the de facto Wu-Tang leader, and developed his own label before becoming part of the inner circle.
The Disciple is a conscious effort on Cilvaringz’s part to set the record straight by telling his side of the story, but may have inadvertently become a smoking gun to many of his most outspoken critics within Wu-Tang, namely Method Man (who notably did not participate in the documentary). Cilvaringz has a testimony in which he describes not feeling as if he had a unique voice within his early work, and that RZA offered him mentorship that inspired him to add more personal details within his lyrics. This would be an uplifting anecdote about artistic development, even if Cilvaringz had only been part of the Wu-Tang’s associate groups, but the fact that he infiltrated the inner group suggests that he was a far sharper businessman than an artist. He was in the right place when Wu-Tang splintered to become close to RZA, and even a novice music critic can tell that his over-rehearsed, calculated lyrics are written from the perspective of an enthusiastic fan. It’s an age-old story about fandom; RZA and the other members were inspired by comic books, East Asian action films, soul, and funk music, but Cilvaringz was only inspired by Wu-Tang.
The only other Wu-Tang member interviewed in The Disciple is Cappadonna, and it’s no coincidence that he’s only featured in the first half of the documentary. The attention-grabbing headline of The Disciple is its insights on Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a project that was conceived by RZA and Cilvaringz at a time in which streaming and piracy has seemingly devalued album releases. The debate about the ethics of piracy is about 15 years too late, but the different motivations from RZA and Cilvaringz point to distinct, if not equivalently flawed sentiments. RZA’s frustration is one of profit; he’s upset that fans would spend money on headphones and CD players but wouldn’t buy individual sales from the artists that they claimed to support. It makes him seem like an “old man yelling at cloud,” but it’s also an out-of-context video clip from over a decade ago. RZA notoriously grew up in a tough neighborhood and survived petty criminal offenses to build his fortune, so he can’t entirely be blamed for not reacting astutely to a generational shift in music distribution.
It's Cilvaringz who’s still bitter about the album’s related controversies after over a decade, and The Disciple doesn’t make the case that they weren’t self-inflicted. The decision to create only one copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which couldn’t be streamed or downloaded, meant that the album was vulnerable to free-market capitalism where there was no guarantee of the highest-bidder. It was a twist that the lone copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was purchased by Martin Shkreli, the former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO whose decision to raise the costs of antiparasitic drugs by over $700 made him “the most hated man in America.”
The documentary is entertaining, given that director Joanna Natasegara inserted Wu-Tang style animation to visualize moments for which there was no archive footage, but the fate of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin doesn’t register in the way that it should. That Shkreli was eventually forced to surrender the album after his arrest for fraud isn’t a complete moral win, not least at all because it was instead purchased by crypto-bros using NFTs. Wu-Tang’s intention to once again make an event out of an album drop was compromised by a gimmick that ensured that its eventual public debut will forever be stained. Cilvaringz may have started off as a fan, but he ended up becoming an enemy of them.