Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: The Untold Story of Wu-Tang Clan's Million-Dollar Secret Album, the Devaluation of Music, and America's New Public Enemy No. 1

(Paperback)

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The untold story behind one of the most controversial album releases in modern music history, for fans of the Wu-Tang Clan, hip-hop music, and all those interested in the music industry. Take a kid with a dream. A legendary hip hop group. 6 years of secret recordings. A casing worthy of a king. A single artifact. Hallowed establishment institutions. An iconoclastic auction house. The world's foremost museum of modern art. A bidding war. Endless crises of conscience. An angry mob. A furious beef. A sale. A villain of Lex Luthor-like proportions. Bill Murray. The FBI. The internet gone wild. In 2007, the innovative Wu-Tang producer, Cilvaringz, feeling that digitisation increasingly supported the perception of music as disposable, took an incendiary idea to his mentor, hip hop legend, RZA: create a unique physical copy of a secret Wu-Tang album, to be encased in silver and sold through auction as a work of contemporary art. The plan raised a number of complex questions: Would selling one album for millions be the ultimate betrayal of music How would fans react to an album that's sold on condition it could not be commercialised And could anyone justify the ultimate sale of the album to the infamous pharmaceutical mogul Martin Shkreli "An epic battle between colorful, creative maniacal heroes and one of the blandest beta-villains of our time. Couldn't put it down."Patton Oswalt, comedian and bestselling author of Silver Screen Fiend

Reviews

An epic battle between colorful, creative maniacal heroes and one of the blandest beta-villains of our time. Couldnt put it down.
Patton Oswalt, comedian and bestselling author of Silver Screen Fiend

"[An] utterly candid work...Bozorgmehr's stirring account gives readers the insider's view of musical outlaws who possessed the best intentions of elevating hip-hop from its street moorings to more stylish, chic surroundings, and whose efforts exploded in a crisis of bad media coverage and soulless pharmaceutical drug merchants."
Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Cyrus Bozorgmehr was the senior adviser on the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin project and worked alongside Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and producer Cilvaringz. He is also part of the Arcadia Spectacular, a British performance and entertainment collective based in Bristol and winners of the Mind-Blowing Spectacles Award. Born in England, he now lives in Marrakech, Morocco.