The controversial businessman, who raised the price of a life-saving drug by more than 5,000% overnight, bought Wu-Tang Clan’s single-copy album for $2 million

NEED TO KNOW

• The new Netflix documentary The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable explores Dutch-Moroccan producer Cilvaringz’s journey from devoted fan to Wu-Tang Clan collaborator, and his influence on the creation of the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin single-copy album
• RZA says Wu-Tang Clan’s infamous album deal with controversial businessman Martin Shkreli, who bought the only copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2 million, was finalized before his drug-pricing spike made news
• Though RZA now acknowledges the role Shkreli played in the album’s story, for better or worse, he hopes a conversation can still exist surrounding its original goal: questioning the value we place on music today

RZA has made peace with the past — and one of the strangest chapters in Wu-Tang Clan history — by addressing that the group’s “Lex Luthor”-style villain, Martin Shkreli, is now an undeniable part of their story.

“Yes, to be honest. Yes. You got to accept that,” RZA tells PEOPLE in a candid conversation about the making of The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable, the new Netflix documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Joanna Natasegara that he produced. The film explores the creation of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the infamous Wu-Tang album that was barred from public release until 2013 and initially sold to Shkreli for $2 million as a singular work of art.

The legendary artist doubles down on the controversial businessman’s involvement, “Even though it’s negative, you got to accept that. Because you know what? Look, maybe there was something negative in it anyway.”

This comes as a particularly vulnerable admission from the man who helped devise the core concept of the ambitious project alongside producer/protégé Cilvaringz (Tarik Azzougarh), whose story of acceptance from fan to friend and journey from the Netherlands to the inner sanctum of the Wu is the catalyst behind the film.

While RZA sought to create his Mona Lisa through this medium, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin simultaneously exists as a challenge to the way music is valued and owned in the modern day.

However, what began as an ambitious art project ultimately became inseparable from the controversy surrounding its buyer. Shkreli, shortly after purchasing the only copy of the album that was produced, received public condemnation for raising the price of Daraprim, an essential antiparasitic medication, by over 5,000%, from $13.50 or $17.50 to $750 per pill.

RZA maintains that the decision to sell Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to Shkreli was finalized before his questionable business practices came to light.

“The deal was done with Martin before he was identified as the evilest man in America,” the rapper explains. “So the crazy thing about it for me was when I met Martin, his story to me was he was an Albanian immigrant. I think his father was a janitor.”

Though RZA recalls initially being “proud” to work with a self-made millionaire, his perspective changed shortly after when news began to emerge about Shkreli’s dealings outside of their business together.

“I’m telling my wife, I’m like, ‘Yo, wait, that’s that motherf—er that’s buying the album. I panicked. And I said, ‘Can we get out of it?’ And it was like, ‘No, you signed the contract already.’ ”

And while RZA acknowledges that Shkreli’s “Lex Luthor-type s—” is, in part, why Shaolin exists as such an anomaly in music history, he maintains that the story of Cilvaringz’s acceptance by Wu-Tang and the subsequent album’s creative mission from conception is still the most prevalent aspect of why The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable exists today.

“It’s not in the documentary, but my mother pushed him on me,” RZA says of meeting Cilvaringz. “She’s like, ‘No, give this kid a chance.’ And I took heed to her, of course.”

The one thing RZA first recognized in Cilvaringz, which led to such a profound creative relationship and friendship, was determination. “Somebody is going to actually get on a plane, come to New York, get on a ferry, come to Staten Island and fail and then do it again,” he says of the Dutch-Moroccan producer’s resolve to not give up until he worked with his heroes — and work they did.

So when Cilvaringz suggested they make an album with only a single copy in existence, RZA was all for it.

The award-winning rapper and producer says the “devaluation” of art made them approach the project from the angle they did. At the time, RZA was intently focused on creating a way for listeners to develop a more tangible relationship with the music they consume, and even recalls floating the concept for a wearable device that would allow fans to carry his catalog with them.

However, the ambition to have his work regarded with the same level of cultural weight as art in a museum pushed him in another direction.

The Wu-Tang and Killa Bees members who contributed to the project could never have imagined what would come of their experiment in scarcity. Nor could they have imagined that once Shkreli was arrested, convicted and ultimately had his assets seized due to a multi-million dollar securities fraud scheme, the next hurdle they would face would be dealing with the Department of Justice, which became the new owner of the album.

“And the Department of Justice physically get this f—ing record,” RZA remembers. “Yo, the Department of Justice, I was on the phone with them, bro. [What are] the Wu doing on the phone with the Department of Justice, right?”

Ultimately, the Department of Justice sold Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to WTC Endeavors Limited, a Hong Kong-based company, for about $2.23 million. That company then resold the album for $4 million to the decentralized cryptocurrency organization PleasrDAO, which remains its owner to this day.

With the most controversial era of the album’s existence behind him, RZA hopes the songs can return to his and Cilvaringz’s original purpose: spurring conversation over music’s value and what is considered art. “A lot of people haven’t heard the album, but they heard of it, and they heard of the controversy,” he says.

He hopes in the future people can experience the music in a museum, as he originally envisioned. “The artist has to be protected,” he says.

For RZA, creating the documentary was an opportunity to revisit the genesis of his musical disciple and the buzz of a single-copy album — an idea that ended up taking on a life of its own.

“It was inspiring to me because it’s like, ‘Yo, this is living proof of a dream coming to a reality, and then [that] reality making an effect on reality itself,’ ” he says. “There’s something really special about it, and I’m grateful to be part of it. Good, bad and ugly.”

The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable is now streaming on Netflix.

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