Image: RZA at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes reality is so wild it makes every music biopic look lazy. That’s the only way to describe The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable — Joanna Natasegara’s documentary about the most mythic record ever pressed — which starts streaming on Netflix today, October 16.

The story starts with a superfan. Dutch-Moroccan producer Cilvaringz worshipped the Wu-Tang Clan from across the Atlantic, hustled his way into RZA’s orbit, and eventually became the architect of a 31-track album designed to exist as a single copy: Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Recorded in secret over years, the album was auctioned off for $2 million — to none other than “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli.

What happened next reads like a crime saga: the U.S. Department of Justice seized the album after Shkreli’s conviction, and it was later sold to the crypto art collective PleasrDAO. Thanks to the deal’s terms, the record is contractually barred from commercial release until 2103. No one will ever stream this album the normal way — and honestly, that’s the point.

Natasegara’s film traces Cilvaringz’s journey from teenage superfan to RZA’s protégé: part music documentary, part heist story, part meditation on what music is worth once you strip away the streaming economy. Hip-hop’s wildest true story is now your perfect weekend watch.

If this Wu-Tang rabbit hole puts you in a new-music mood, don’t miss A$AP Rocky leading this week’s New Music Friday heat with “Shroom Clouds”.

Sources: Men’s Journal, Blex Media.