Netflix doc on Wu-Tang's secret album is strictly for super fans

The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable arrived on Netflix on October 16 with a story that sounds built for a wide audience: the secret recording of a Wu-Tang Clan album, its $2 million sale to Martin Shkreli, and its later seizure by the US government. But early reviews suggest the documentary, directed by Oscar winner Joanna Natasegara and executive produced by RZA, is aimed squarely at fans already fluent in the saga. The Guardian's review calls it "strictly for super fans" and describes a film that assumes "a baseline level of fluency in these occasionally arcane events."

The film centers on Tarik Azzougarh, the Dutch Moroccan rapper and producer known as Cilvaringz, who narrates much of the documentary using his personal archive. Natasegara follows Azzougarh from his teenage obsession with Wu-Tang through his eventual entry into RZA's inner circle, where he became the driving force behind Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The 31-track double album was recorded in secret between 2007 and 2013 and featured collaborators including Redman and Cher, according to The Guardian.

The review notes that the film's focus on Azzougarh can feel repetitive and dead-ending, with minimal input from other Wu-Tang members beyond "vague recollections and niceties." RZA appears only in archival footage or grayscale interludes before a chess board. The Guardian writes that the documentary "gestures at many potentially fruitful deep dives" but largely stays on the glossy surface, leaving unresolved questions such as where Azzougarh and RZA stand now.

The album's post-sale history remains a central thread. Shkreli purchased the one-of-one CD for $2 million in 2015 under terms barring commercial release for 88 years. After Shkreli's securities fraud conviction, the government seized the album and sold it to the digital art collective PleasrDAO for $4 million in 2021. Natasegara's film does not generate clickbait or conflict, according to The Guardian, and Shkreli does not enter the story until the final third.

Netflix's own materials describe the album as "the most expensive record ever sold" and note that its music cannot legally be released until 2103. In 2026, PleasrDAO played about 20 minutes of the album for a small invited audience in Park City, Utah following a screening of The Disciple, marking only the seventh public playback in the album's history, according to The Washington Post via Netflix.

Method Man hears the album for the first time

The documentary's release coincided with a separate first: Method Man listened to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for the first time on the October 16 episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out. The rapper, who had been critical of the one-copy strategy and of Cilvaringz, changed his tune after a Brooklyn listening session. "I could see why people will like this album, and I could see why people will love this album," Method Man said. "I don't hate it."

Billboard reports that Method Man praised Cilvaringz's production as "on par with some of the stuff RZA would do back in the day" while noting the album felt "a bit long sometimes." He added that he has a "chip on his shoulder" about the album's muddied public history but went into the listen with a non-biased approach. "We found out that album ain't as bad as I expected it to be," Method Man concluded.