‘The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable’ Netflix Review: A Dutch Superfan’s Obsession Leads to the Strangest Album in Hip-Hop History

Wu-Tang Clan, the influential hip-hop group from Staten Island, has already been the subject of several films and series exploring its history and career, including the documentaries Wu-Tang Saga (2010) and Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men (2019), as well as the scripted biographical series Wu-Tang: An American Saga (2019–2023). So The Disciple film is less about filling in another chapter of the group’s history than about expanding on one particularly strange and fascinating episode: the release, in 2015, of an album called Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which has perhaps the most unusual backstory in the history of recorded music.

But we’ll get to that. The film actually begins by focusing on someone who, at least initially, has nothing to do with Wu-Tang. That person is Tarik Azzougarh, a Dutchman who tells the story of how he became involved with the group and eventually played a key role in the creation of that controversial album. Azzougarh was a Moroccan kid who became obsessed with rap as a teenager and then with Wu-Tang Clan, to the point of putting together his own group along similar lines: a collective made up of numerous solo artists. His stage name from then on would be Cilvaringz.

His obsession was to get the Wu-Tang members — and especially their producer, RZA — to hear his album and release it on their label as one of the «Killa Bees,» the collective name for the Clan’s sprawling network of affiliates, side groups and associated producers. The film follows his trips to New York and his many initially unsuccessful attempts to get their attention, until he finally manages to make contact. Little by little, Tarik gets on the group’s radar. He starts organizing tours and concerts for them, his band opens for them on those tours, and he gradually becomes a peripheral but increasingly significant part of their story.

Around 2007 — roughly halfway through a film that, up to that point, is little more than the story of an obsessive fan trying to get closer to and work with his idols — comes the moment that changes everything. By then, Cilvaringz had stopped rapping and was producing, and he began working on an album of his own, featuring collaborations with many Wu-Tang members, other rappers from their orbit, and a number of special guests who were added over the years as he and, with RZA’s help, continued to expand an album that was not, at least initially, an official Wu-Tang record.

By 2015, Cilvaringz had come up with an unusual idea for releasing the album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. In the midst of the era of free MP3 downloads, he figured that the way to restore value to music was to turn it into a piece of art. In other words, there would be a single copy, and people would be able to «visit» it the way they visit a museum to see a painting. The album had cost a considerable amount of money to make, and they needed to recoup that investment, so they created an extraordinarily elaborate edition and put it up for auction. The buyer was also contractually forbidden from commercially distributing the music for 88 years, which means that, to this day, very few people have actually heard it. And the controversial, utterly bizarre saga of what happened next takes up most of the second half of this film — and that’s where it really becomes worth watching, because it’s a genuinely strange story whichever way you look at it.

Outside of that, Joanna Natasegara’s documentary contains relatively little Wu-Tang material itself. In fact, several members of the group eventually fell out with Tarik. There are interviews with RZA and Cappadonna, the latter filmed as he walks through the neighborhood where they grew up, along with some historical background about the group, its connection with martial arts, and its local and international influence. But for the most part, this is the story of an enthusiastic and entrepreneurial fan who managed to get inside his favorite band’s orbit, convinced them to release a very unusual record that he himself produced, and, for a few years, turned them into the most controversial hip-hop group on the planet.