Contemporary Authors

• 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 Flatiron Books (New York, NY), 2017

1. One 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 LCCN 2017005470 Type of material Book Personal name Bozorgmehr, Cyrus, author. Main title One 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 / Cyrus Bozorgmehr. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Flatiron Books, 2017. Description viii, 274 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9781250125279 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER ML421.W8 B69 2017 Copy 1 Request in Performing Arts Reading Room (Madison, LM113)

• The Syndicate - 2017 Cyrus Bozorgmehr,

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/advisor-behind-wu-tang-clans-single-copy-album-where-music-cyrus/

  An advisor behind Wu-Tang Clan's single-copy album says this is where the music industry's headed next
  Published on Published onJuly 16, 2017
  Cyrus Bozorgmehr
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  The economic meltdown within the music industry has become something of a truism in recent years. Various diagnoses and solutions have been floated, perhaps most notoriously in the engraved silver shape of Wu-Tang Clan’s single-copy album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, but the questions remain: what is the nub of the problem and can anything be done?

  Digitization and the internet were supposed to usher in a new dawn of democratization, harnessing the egalitarian nature of global connectivity to tear down existing monoliths and create a new production and distribution landscape. Anyone could make electronic based music with a laptop and form a new digital label that in theory had the same distribution reach as any major. The first flush of the revolution was heady indeed, but before long, it had begun to morph into a new tyranny.

  With investment filters removed, there was no threshold to release, no need to justify the outlay required to press up and distribute vinyl or CDs. Thousands of new songs began to flood the pathways until the sheer volume of new music became oppressive rather than liberating for the consumer. Before long, production and distribution were no longer an obstacle to success, but actually getting heard above the fray became an even thornier problem.

  The records and CDs we once engaged with as portals to the sublime dissolved into the ether, and that abstraction broke the primal connection with a physical entity. We began to see music as something inherently insubstantial and it became rootless, appearing in various digital forms from YouTube to our ringtones. Piracy too began to corrode notions of value as cyberspace’s self-appointed Robin Hoods convinced themselves they were taking down the majors even as they embedded a sense of entitlement that would ultimately swallow the independent.

  By 2011, we had reached a point where 94% of the 8 million unique digital tracks released that year sold less than 100 copies while 32% sold only a single copy. Either the vast majority of music was utterly abysmal and thus didn’t warrant any sales, or else something had gone very wrong at the heart of the new economics. The majors emerged relatively unscathed – adjustments would have to be made but the route to survival was becoming clear. Revenue now came from touring, merchandising and licensing while recorded music almost became a loss leader – a kind of brand signaling that primed fans to spend money in the more profitable spheres of the industry. Huge promotional budgets ensured their music got heard, and before long we had reached a point where the big players were more influential than ever, but their jagged experience of change had instilled a new caution.

  Development budgets vanished and the notion of creative risk ebbed away. Not unlike the film industry, a major label would develop and release ten albums, of which 5 might be by established artists but the other 5 gave voice to undiscovered creativity. Of those 5, 4 would fail and 1 would be the next big thing, but ultimately, the finances balanced out, allowing both business and musical innovation to thrive. In the years following the Great Digital Meteor, the music and film industries mirrored one another in their adherence to tentpoles and franchises, subsuming new creative perspectives in the rush to prudence.

  And the listener? Well ironically, they suffered as much as anyone as the actual experience of music began to dilute. Ubiquity had its own cost and instead of taking an album off a shelf, and listening to it thoroughly, we could access music anywhere and anytime – a shift that broke the solemn communion with a record and subliminally encouraged the notion that music could be taken for granted.

  The Wu Tang single copy album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, sought to protest these dynamics by symbolically re-attaching value to a piece of recorded music while casting it in the formal framework of the art market to make a point about how music is perceived. It was always ludicrous to imagine that private album sales could be any kind of solution, but it triggered a debate and made a further, deeply uncomfortable point. If we as a society do not financially support the music we value, then at what point is it fair for that music to be taken away and sold to the highest bidder?

  But along that pitfall-strewn journey into the heart of tabloid controversy, we learned myriad lessons, including one curious paradox that I feel offers an interesting insight:

  Physicality is important. It is what establishes that bond between us and the experience we seek. Holding something, paying for something, mounting it on a shelf – all these actions invest inanimate objects with meaning and bonds us into an understanding of its value. Hence "things" are important.
  Possessions have been superseded in value by experiences. Recent studies demonstrate people would rather purchase an experience than a new possession. Hence ‘things’ are no longer important.
  So how do we square that circle? It’s arguable that the second half of that paradox supports the trend that concerts and tours are now the chief sources of revenue in the music industry. But it still doesn’t level the playing field on who actually gets to tour – an act has to be bookable and viable to tour, and that relies on their music being recognised.

  I think the key to the paradox is that sometimes, ‘things’ actually generate or at least deepen experiences. Schrödinger’s album is at once a physical entity and an experience. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was arguably the most hyped album of all time, a fact made only more extraordinary because no one expected to ever hear the music. Admittedly, it took an already successful brand to make that much international noise, but at core, it was about making the acquisition and purchase of a piece of musical experience in itself.

  Do you set a series of challenges that people must undergo in order to unlock the music? Do you suddenly start blasting your new album at random locations around the city before leaving a calling card with a web address and a cryptogram?

  In a strict sense, we’re talking marketing here – guerrilla marketing rather than the tired conventions of adolescent pop, but it does run a little deeper. It’s about reinvesting the acquisition of music with drama and excitement – creating a wider narrative and a sense of mystique that then manifests through increased emotional value. If you’ve had to invest time, thought and energy into listening to a piece of music, you’ll always value it more than your iTunes download because it comes with a story.

  Yuval Noah Harari’s bestselling book Sapiens offers a perspective here. It posits that humans are shaped by storytelling and that communities cooperated based on shared stories like religion. If stories are genuinely the key to the human psyche, then maybe factoring storytelling into the very acts of manufacturing and distribution could be the answer to the sweeping tide of indolence.

  It may be a short-term solution, it may trigger a race of marketing excess that burns out in a few short years, but it’s worth considering if you want to stand out from the crowd and communicate in new and impactful ways with your potential audience. In an age where our touchstones are immediacy and ease of access, maybe doing the exact opposite is the only way to shine.

  Cyrus Bozorgmehr is the author of 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, out now from Flatiron Books. He 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 lives in Marrakech.

• Vulture - http://www.vulture.com/2017/07/martin-shkreli-wu-tang-album-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin.html

  QUOTED: "We had a sense that some fans might be confused. ... And no one on the Wu-Tang side had processed that there was a whole legal framework to selling something that a buyer might pay millions for. We didn’t consider that buyers would want to protect their investment by making sure we didn’t leak the album after the sale. There was no clear resolution to some of those problems, so we realized that we were going to have to trust that the buyer would act in good faith."
  "We did do some Googling about Martin ... but had no idea he was about to become the most evil man in America. He just seemed like a wealthy young guy who sincerely loved rap."

  July 11, 2017 8:00 am
  The (Presumably) True Story Behind Martin Shkreli and That Wu-Tang Album
  By
  David Marchese
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  Illustration: Gluekit
  The saga of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album, which unfolded in 2015, seemed both too good to be true and too good to ignore. There was the outlandish conceit: The iconic rap group had recorded an entire new album, of which it was producing only a single copy. There was the over-the-top villain: pharma-industry gremlin Martin Shkreli, who, in what appeared to be a trolling act of conspicuous consumption, bought the copy of the album for a reported $2 million (the exact number has never been officially confirmed) in order to hoard it for himself. And there was the whiff of illicit high jinks: A rumored clause in the sale contract suggested that the Clan (or, weirdly, Bill Murray) could legitimately retrieve the album from Shkreli if they managed to nab it from him in a heist. (Because of course there has to be a Bill Murray angle.) As with all too-good-to-be-true stories, this one turned out to be part truth, part rumor, part hoax, and all ridiculous.

  A year and a half later, a new book, 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, purports to tell, well, the untold story of the whole strange episode. The book’s author, the Wu-Tang’s self-described “adviser” Cyrus Bozorgmehr, claims that the meticulously planned, cleverly orchestrated Shaolin experience was conceived as a publicity stunt — though his book, he says, is not. “I can’t force anyone to believe what’s in the book,” Bozorgmehr says, recounting how he gained firsthand access to the project after meeting the rap producer Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh, who co-produced Shaolin. “From our perspective, we thought the book needed to exist because there was a lot going on behind the scenes that we could only share after the project was over.”

  As recounted in the book, the genesis of the Shaolin project came, as tales of international intrigue so often do, from a meeting in Marrakech. It was there that the author ran into Cilvaringz at an art-world event. Eventually, the producer described how, during a mystical evening atop the Great Pyramid of Khufu with Wu-Tang mastermind RZA, the plan was hatched to create a work of art with lasting impact — more lasting than music tends to be in the current streaming era. Thus: Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a double album of all-new, all-original Wu-Tang Clan material, which would exist as one lone copy, in a direct rebuke to the disposability and accessibility of contemporary music. Furthermore, the buyer would be contractually prohibited from sharing the music commercially in any public forum for 88 years. “The idea,” explains Bozorgmehr, “was to imbue the album with the importance of a painting by a Renaissance master.”

  Once the album was completed, and after the Clan realized that many of the group’s fans weren’t exactly pleased with the notion of new music being made available only to the buyer with the deepest pockets, the project began to butt up against the real world. “We had a sense that some fans might be confused,” says Bozorgmehr. “And no one on the Wu-Tang side had processed that there was a whole legal framework to selling something that a buyer might pay millions for. We didn’t consider that buyers would want to protect their investment by making sure we didn’t leak the album after the sale. There was no clear resolution to some of those problems, so we realized that we were going to have to trust that the buyer would act in good faith.”

  That is, if a millionaire buyer even materialized. One did — but he turned out to be someone to whom the notion of “good faith” is alien. Martin Shkreli, who would soon become the face of corporate greed after his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, jacked up the price of an AIDS-related drug, is said to have paid $2 million for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. “We did do some Googling about Martin,” Bozorgmehr admits, “but had no idea he was about to become the most evil man in America. He just seemed like a wealthy young guy who sincerely loved rap.”

  It was Shkreli’s purchase, first reported in December 2015, that moved the Shaolin story from amusing music-world stunt to a global news event. Shkreli used the fact of his ownership to embellish his public role as a bad boy. He taunted RZA online after the latter expressed dismay at his business practices and promised he’d release the album for free if Donald Trump was elected president. (He never did, though he posted snippets on YouTube.) Most crudely, he claimed in an interview that he’d be willing to play the album for Taylor Swift in return for sexual favors.

  The Wu was not happy. “Martin went nuts with his idea of public theater,” says Bozorgmehr. “He would get in touch with us privately and say, ‘I’ve just been abusive to RZA in an interview. Isn’t that great?’ And we’re going, ‘No!’ ”

  The issue was further confused when, in a wishful-thinking response to Shkreli’s antics, an interested observer online tweeted a (false) quote from a (falsified) contract that claimed to show the (entirely bogus) clause that allowed Wu-Tang Clan and/or Bill Murray — a real-life acquaintance of RZA’s — to steal the album back. As sometimes happens with false tweets about bogus clauses in falsified contracts, the media picked up the story and reported it as if it were real. “I don’t think Bill was ever even aware of the album,” says Bozorgmehr.

  Eventually, the internet moved on. It helped a little that Shkreli got a comeuppance of sorts: He was booted off Twitter over a harassment incident, and his trial on charges of securities fraud began on June 26.
  (Shkreli could not be reached for comment for this article.) As for the record — it’s real, and it’s still in Shkreli’s hands. “We don’t even know if he’s ever listened to the album,” says Bozorgmehr. Sadly, not even Bill Murray can remedy this.

  Book Excerpt: When Shaolin Met Shkreli
  Wu-Tang Clan found an anonymous buyer for their album in pharmaceuticals mogul Martin Shkreli. In an excerpt from his book, Cyrus Bozorgmehr explains what happened next.

  We genuinely couldn’t see how breaking anonymity might be desirable for Martin [Shkreli], as it would just be used as a stick to beat him and raise all kinds of questions about where the money he was making from sick children was actually going. The glaring hole in our logic was that we were using our own empathy to guess his motives, and he didn’t think like most people … He didn’t care about bad press. Quite the contrary — he was thirsting after it like a crack-head frantically trying to score his next rock.

  There were a couple of other worrying signs in that first week of December, most notably when Martin called Cilvaringz and said that he’d gotten drunk and told a few girls that he owned the album. His conclusion was that the news would leak very soon, but that was quite a stretch. Telling a couple of girls doesn’t mean headline news by a long shot … Martin had assured us that he wanted to remain anonymous at least for the time being, there was a decidedly strange wind blowing.

  And then it happened. An email from Devin Leonard [a Bloomberg Businessweek writer] giving us an hour to comment on three main elements: The identity of the buyer. The price. And something Alexander Gilkes [head of Paddle8, which handled the album’s sale] had apparently said to Martin about how if he bought the album, ‘celebrities and rappers’ would want to hang out with him. Fuck — OK — well … If Martin wanted to go public with his name — then that was his right. The price thing was very odd, but Bloomberg had attributed it to ‘someone familiar with the deal,’ which basically meant Martin himself as it certainly hadn’t come from any of us, and to this day we still haven’t confirmed if it’s the real price or not. RZA fired over a quote that sought simply to make clear that the deal was agreed on well before we knew anything about Martin’s business practices and that we’d given money to charity …

  The news broke to a predictable avalanche of outrage. This was a real story. Fuck that mealy-mouthed shit from a few weeks ago where the album sold for an undisclosed amount to an undisclosed buyer. That was yawn central. But THIS — now THIS — was a story.”

  Adapted from Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, by Cyrus Bozorgmehr. Copyright (c) 2017 by the author and reprinted by permission of Flatiron Books.

• Macmillan - https://us.macmillan.com/author/cyrusbozorgmehr/

  CYRUS BOZORGMEHR
  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 lives in Marrakech, Morocco.

• Mass Appeal - https://massappeal.com/wu-tang-clan-once-upon-time-shaolin/

  QUOTED: "Funnily enough, despite being surrounded by Wu fans throughout the ’90s, I never really discovered them properly, not least because I was pretty militantly into illegal rave culture at the time. But I think it gave me a really helpful degree of objectivity, which I’d have struggled with if I’d had a personal fan history."
  "About ten Vicodins into a serious leg injury. I’d been dead-set against writing the book and wanted an independent journalist to come in and chronicle it. Then, that same night at the Shaolin temple, I got carried away with the whole Kung Fu vibe and while jumping a traffic cone to show these Shaolin dudes how we chubby Brits do things, I broke my leg and shredded my ligaments. Carted home in a wheelchair and realizing I was immobile for several weeks, I piled into the prologue to see if it flowed—and I guess it did!"

  KATHY IANDOLI
  SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
  MEET THE MAN WHO HOLDS THE SECRETS OF WU-TANG’S MILLION-DOLLAR LP
  An inside look at the madness of ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’
  By now, you’re aware of the single copy Wu-Tang Clan project Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, an album that was ultimately auctioned off to a man named Martin Shkreli—the pharmaceutical industry’s version of Donald Trump. The ne’er-do-well took a huge L messing with the W, but through it all there was one man who witnessed the madness firsthand. His name is Cyrus Bozorgmehr.

  Cyrus was the senior advisor to the Once Upon A Time In Shaolin album, representing the financier behind it all: the elusive Mr. S. We learn about Mr. S and the whole come-up tale of the big-budget album in Cyrus’s recent book 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. While the book gives all of the juicy details behind the scenes of this now infamous album and business deal, it’s also a lesson in the changing climate of the music industry and how guys like RZA and his right hand man Cilvaringz had to quickly adapt to the ongoing shifts in the paradigm while seemingly creating their own.

  The story itself provides enough fodder to fill an entire weird livestream session of Shkreli psycho-babbling over the leaked album, yet it’s Cyrus’s humor and strong storytelling voice that make the book a total hit. MASS APPEAL chopped it up with the Wu consigliere about having this unique honor and what he plans to do next.

  Cyrus Bozorgmehr
  Photo: Ilja Meefout
  Did you ever in your life think you would one day be the consigliere to the now most notorious Wu-Tang Clan album in the history of hip-hop?
  If I could ever safely answer “no” to a question—this is the one! It’s been off-the-scale random.

  How much of a Wu-Tang fan were you before Once Upon A Time In Shaolin and how much of a fan were you after?
  Funnily enough, despite being surrounded by Wu fans throughout the ’90s, I never really discovered them properly, not least because I was pretty militantly into illegal rave culture at the time. But I think it gave me a really helpful degree of objectivity, which I’d have struggled with if I’d had a personal fan history.

  The first time I heard 36 Chambers properly was in a Shaolin temple at 2 a.m. in the middle of New York with RZA playing chess next to me as someone poured a savagely strong Chinese spirit down my throat. It was like being introduced to Wu music in the eye of a Wu archetype—temples, chess, Kung Fu—you name it, and I began listening deeper from that moment on.

  At what point did you decide to make this entire moment of your life into a book?
  About ten Vicodins into a serious leg injury. I’d been dead-set against writing the book and wanted an independent journalist to come in and chronicle it. Then, that same night at the Shaolin temple, I got carried away with the whole Kung Fu vibe and while jumping a traffic cone to show these Shaolin dudes how we chubby Brits do things, I broke my leg and shredded my ligaments. Carted home in a wheelchair and realizing I was immobile for several weeks, I piled into the prologue to see if it flowed—and I guess it did!

  Did you have any reservations in telling this story publicly, especially knowing how Martin Shkreli tends to pop off whenever he wants?
  Honestly? Not at all. So much of this project had played out behind the veil and there was so much speculation as to motives—cash grab, cultural vandalism, cynical bling, etc.—that I genuinely felt the version from inside the bunker needed telling. Silence was essential to keep the process stable while the project was still in flux, but once the album sold, the veil needed snapping back. I wrote it while all the emotions were still fresh, and I like to think that gives it honesty. In terms of Martin though, the only real consideration was where to end the book; do you wait for the next installment of crazy or just draw the line?

  You go into detail about the crazy disappointment you all felt upon learning that the man who bought the project then spiked AIDS medication to $700 a pill. Can you describe your personal feelings that moment when you learned that information after literally just selling him the album?
  It was like being smacked with a baseball bat. We’d been in legal negotiations for three months, so we’d foolishly started to develop a sense of security about the deal. He seemed like such a low-profile guy—far more so than some of the other potential buyers—and despite a patchy history of lawsuits and investigations, nothing seemed that out of the ordinary for a young, self-made millionaire.

  I hate to say it, but my first thought was the crisis we’d been plunged into with the album. Within a couple of hours, it turned personal as I realized three of my friends with a different auto-immune syndrome, Lyme’s Disease, would be directly affected by the hike. Their families were starting petitions and here I was, silently aware that I was doing business with the guy and caught between panic and shame. I needed several showers after that, but in terms of symbolism, I eventually embraced the idea of him being the buyer—though it took me awhile to get there, and I’m still not sure if I’m kidding myself!

  You also mention in the book how there was a potential threat of violence to Shkreli’s life via “bullets from a Staten Island crew” until he was taken into custody. Were you at any point like, “Oh shit, I’m going from senior advisor to witness to a murder”?
  There was this sense of losing control and dealing with someone who didn’t understand that actions have consequences. You have to remember that this is before he became a caricature figure with the Ghost beef, etc. It wasn’t so much that we thought it would definitely happen, but in the heat of that moment, with him saying crazier and crazier things—the replica AK-47s, the ODB diss he was planning—if the FBI hadn’t arrested him that night, we were really worried that he’d gone so far, so quickly, that someone might take it upon themselves to shut him up.

  It takes balls to write this story. How much fair warning did you give to everyone involved and how did they take it? If anyone was going to write this story, it should be you.
  Thanks so much! I was really nervous. I knew I could seem like an outsider cashing in on the Wu legacy, and there were strong enough feelings about this in the hip-hop world without some dude no one’s ever heard of telling the story. RZA and Cilvaringz knew, but left me to it—which felt like serious trust—and I contacted a couple of people who might be adversely affected by being in it to see if they were OK with the passages that concerned them, but for the most part I kept it pretty undercover. Ultimately, I felt that if I stayed myself and wrote it as honestly as I could—like telling a group of friends rather than “the world”—then I could hold my head up whatever the fallout.

  What was the wildest thing you witnessed throughout this whole process?
  There were all kinds of crazy chapters; it honestly felt like a caper at times, but the thing that really left a mark was watching people react to the 13 minutes of music played at MoMA PS1. It was a glorious melting pot of people—from the press, to billionaires, to hip-hop fans who’d won a radio competition—but every one of them knew this would be the only chance to hear a piece of music. How do you react to that? Do you close your eyes and try and memorize every beat, do you lose yourself in the moment, do you dance or is that weird in an art gallery? How do we behave in the age of permanent access when we have to maximize a single, ephemeral moment in time?

  Photo: Ilja Meefout
  In retrospect, would you relive this all over again?
  In the end, life’s about ideas, emotions, connections and adventures…. and this was a full house. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

  What is the greatest lesson you learned about the music industry and about yourself from all of this?
  Having started this project with the firm belief that the music industry was in crisis, I now feel we’re living through incredibly exciting times. With the old way of doing things in ashes, everyone’s trying to figure out what the new architecture will look like. Even as the majors continue to pump out sanitized, risk-free nonsense, the quest for a sustainable business model for genuine creativity keeps throwing up interesting twists.

  Most people over the age of 16 are pretty well-tuned to corporate marketing and authenticity is the new currency. That comes with its own irony, as so much authenticity is manufactured, but the idea that you have to build a bigger story than just your music has opened new creative avenues—mediums, installations, guerrilla marketing, harnessing the other senses and making the act of acquiring music part of the music’s story, not just a functional prelude.

  I think the biggest personal lesson I learned is that I’m way more cautious than I thought. I mean, I was always pretty reckless, but the level of crazy I was exposed to here definitely made me feel borderline priggish as I kept finding myself advising against the latest slice of lunacy on the table. I guess it’s all relative!

  What is your next move? Is it writing more books or taking on more potentially dangerous projects?
  Well I’ve got a novel out called The Syndicate, which I wrote during the post-Shaolin blues, but the project closest to my heart is working with UK events organization, Arcadia. We’ve got a 50 ton robotic Spider, built from repurposed military hardware, lights, lasers, 50-foot fireballs, a huge 360-degree sound field, people firing lightning bolts from their bodies, creatures the size of cars crawling above the crowd, and performers in G Force spins dangling from the creature’s claws. It’s pretty damn cool and a vivid expression of underground culture and conscious ideas.

  But if anyone’s got any insane projects that involve philosophical whirlwinds, adventures into the unknown, a pinch of subversion, a sprinkle of lunacy, intoxicating international missions and a healthy handle on the surreal—then please give me a call!

QUOTED: "a detailed, compelling look at of one of the music business' most interesting stories."

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
David Pitt
Booklist. 113.19-20 (June 2017): p34.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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Full Text:
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. By Cyrus Bozorgmehr. July 2017. 288p. Flatiron, $26.99 (9781250125279). 782.421649.

In 2007, Wu-Tang Clan, then the top-selling hip-hop group, started work on a record album unlike any ever produced: there would be only one copy, specially packaged, and it would be auctioned to the highest bidder not as a record but as a unique piece of art. The album was conceived as a response to the devaluation of music that followed from the digitization of recordings and the belief among music fans that it was their right to listen to music for free. The book is written by one of the people who worked with the group as the album was produced and prepared for sale; his insiders knowledge of the process drives this fascinating story, full of suspense (at one point the laptop containing the only copies of the songs went missing) and surprises (the anonymous buyer turned out to be Martin Shkreli, who bought the album just before he famously jacked up the price of a drug he had begun manufacturing and became the object of global condemnation). A detailed, compelling look at of one of the music business' most interesting stories.--David Pitt

Pitt, David. "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." Booklist, June 2017, p. 34. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582630/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=aad6fcec. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.

• Pop Matters
  https://www.popmatters.com/once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin-cyrus-bozorgmehr-2497173937.html
  Word count: 1433

  QUOTED: "It's the fabulous clunkiness of this sort of prose, the kitsch improbability of the events described, that make the book so charming."
  "This is no critical theory treatise. This is no historical document. This is the story of chance encounters, gathering momentum, and a whole lot of drive. This is the story of a man who was involved in a project he truly believed i, and wound up with some incredible anecdotes along the way. By [the] time real life pantomime villain Martin Shkreli shows up with $2 million in his mitts, it would take a hard heart not to be just a little intrigued."

  A Clash of Hip-Hop Legend, Pop-Culture Philosophizing, and one Incredible Story
  JOHN BURNS 12. Oct, 2017.
  WHAT IS THE TRUE VALUE OF MUSIC? CYRUS BOZORGMEHR CONSIDERS THIS QUESTION IN HIS WILD RETELLING OF THE STORY OF ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHAOLIN; THE WU-TANG CLAN'S SINGLE-COPY ALBUM PROJECT.

  ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHAOLIN: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE WU-TANG CLAN'S MILLION-DOLLAR SECRET ALBUM, THE DEVALUATION OF MUSIC, AND AMERICA'S NEW PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1
  Publisher: Flatiron
  Length: 272 pages
  Author: Cyrus Bozorgmehr
  Price: $26.99
  Format: Hardcover
  PUBLICATION DATE: 2017-07
  AMAZON
  For hip-hop aficionados, the Wu-Tang Clan are a big deal. From the moment they first stepped up to the stage in Staten Island, New York in the early '90s, it was clear that something was up. Since then, the Clan have attracted a ravenously devoted fanbase, and have managed to pull the rare trick of being cult heroes, critical darlings, and mainstream superstars, all at the same time.

  This combination of shrewd business acumen and musical prowess propelled the group skywards. A slew of critically acclaimed, commercially successful albums followed, securing the group's position up there in the pantheon of hip-hop royalty.

  Not all survived the ride. In 2004, Russel Tyrone Jones -- better known as Ol' Dirty Bastard, or ODB -- died of a suspected drug overdose. His death followed an extended period of legal troubles and increasing mental instability for Jones, and plunged the already fractious hip-hop collective into its darkest period to date.

  Under the stewardship of unofficial leader RZA, the surviving motley crew of Raekwon, GZA, Method Man, Ghostface Killer, Inspectah Deck, U-God and Master Killa needed to head somewhere new. They needed to refresh the project and move into new territory, which had yet to be charted. They'd sold gold and platinum albums in the past, so what about just selling one album? A single copy of an album, for millions of dollars? An extreme idea -- so extreme that it might just work.

  This is the story of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a one-off musical project, which would go on to be the most exclusive, and expensive, record ever produced, as told by senior advisor and collaborator, Cyrus Bozorgmehr. Hold on tight, because it's a rollercoaster.

  Bozorgmehr is our narrator, our authority, our window into this world of privilege and improbability; a world in which basically anything can happen and in which Cher drops in for a guest spot. But primarily, he is our confidante in the 'ripping yarn' and all round tall-tale that is Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. As readers, we wade into the narrative at the same time Cyrus does, meeting an enigmatic "Moroccan chap" named Tarik, who turns out to be Dutch rapper and producer Tarik "Cilvaringz" Azzougarh.

  The meeting takes place at a launch party thrown by the Scottish artist and former gangster Jimmy Boyle in Marrakech. The tone is set from the start: money, art, danger, intrigue, glamor. It's all here, and with Bozorgmehr by our side, we know we are going to experience it all.

  Bozorgmehr's narrative style is less 'balanced historical account' and more 'excitable (and very articulate) stranger in a bar' who grabs our attention and keeps it. Don't expect thoroughly-sourced, meticulously-interrogated testimony from Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. This is an eyewitness account, although much of what our new friend recounts he could not possibly have borne witness to. This is a ride; we either get on board with our narrator from the start, or we wave him off at the platform. There are no raised hands, no questions. Just a breakneck dive into a world we never thought we'd be privy to.

  For eaders, this sense of 'getting on board' is vital. The clichés come thick and fast in the early stages of the book -- the winds "howl" and rains "slam down" in the "cruel" Dutch summer, Cilvaringz's quest to find RZA is "like climbing the highest mountain imaginable" -- and several times Cyrus' account veers dangerously close to being grating. We have a choice to make; we either accept Bozorgmehr's singular voice, or we don't bother with the book at all. Quite simply, it's Cyrus' way, or the highway.

  Those that persevere may find themselves rewarded, however. What our companion lacks in terms of narrative skill and originality, he makes up for in enthusiasm, passion and the richness of the subject matter. On that fateful Moroccan day back in 2007, Bozorgmehr stumbled across an untapped seam of pure pop culture gold, and the opening of a fascinating chapter in the history of music as we know it.

  The story goes like this: One of the world's most respected hip-hop outfits have a vision. Working closely with their Dutch protege-turned-associate, they set about changing the way music is consumed, even the way it is perceived by the general public. They want to re-elevate hip-hop, and music in general, to the status of bona fide art form, stepping away from the 'throwaway', 'instant download' culture of modern music towards something more tangibly profound.

  How will they do this? By recording and releasing a single-copy album; an album which will be promoted via sneak previews and closely-guarded installations in art galleries and academic institutions. After this, it will be auctioned to the highest bidder, and immortality will be achieved.

  The idea of immortality creeps up several times in the book. When Bozorgmehr shows us the genesis of this record, it occurs at Egypt's great pyramids of Giza. Cilvaringz and RZA have visited the ancient site on a journey which is part jet-setting holiday and part soul-searching vision quest. The pair and their guide manage to charm themselves into the pyramid complex after closing time... Bozorgmehr takes up the story from here:

  "As they sat, heads bowed to the dynasty that demanded such immortality and the forgotten craftsmen who forged it, they marvelled at the precision, the detail, the art, the permanence... up here on the pillars of time, the third eye opened."
  "Someday we need to do something together that lasts through the ages," whispered Cilvaringz.

  RZA nodded, lost in thought. Shapeshifting in the lone and level sands... "Word."

  It's the fabulous clunkiness of this sort of prose, the kitsch improbability of the events described, that make the book so charming. Whether Bozorgmehr is taking us on a nervous, sweaty-palmed trip through Homeland Security with a priceless cargo in tow, or whether he's leading us on a philosophical exploration of the nature of art and of cultural consumption, he retains the reader's attention. The quality of his writing may be up for debate, but he's quite the storyteller, and that's certainly worth something.

  You could make the argument that the cultural points raised -- the concept of artistic hierarchies with fine art at the top and video games at the bottom, the increasing commoditization of music and the musicians who make it by major corporations -- deserve more sober and extended analysis. This is certainly true, but to do so would have made this a different book entirely.

  This is no critical theory treatise. This is no historical document. This is the story of chance encounters, gathering momentum, and a whole lot of drive. This is the story of a man who was involved in a project he truly believed i, and wound up with some incredible anecdotes along the way. By time real life pantomime villain Martin Shkreli shows up with $2million in his mitts, it would take a hard heart not to be just a little intrigued.

  Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is flawed, yes. Dubious; perhaps, in places. Disposable; certainly not.

  Rating: 6/10

• Bookforum
  http://www.bookforum.com/review/18666
  Word count: 1334

  QUOTED: "Bozorgmehr doesn’t seem interested—or capable—of telling the story without getting sidetracked."
  "Shaolin’s brighter moments emerge when the genuine novelty of the single-copy experiment spins other unique ideas into its orbit."

  OCT 4 2017
  Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Cyrus Bozorgmehr
  Chris Ruen
  web exclusive

  In 2014, the Wu-Tang Clan shocked the music world by deciding to sell only one copy of their new album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Wu-Tang would “tour” the physical album to select venues, and then sell it to the highest bidder. Most fans would never hear the album. This was the group’s way of rejecting the online paradigm of endless free content and of trying to get people to treat music more like art. If people weren’t willing to pay for musicians’ work, then they wouldn’t get to hear it. Music would work on a patronage system.

  “The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years,” RZA, the group’s mastermind, told Forbes upon revealing the project to the world. “And yet it doesn’t receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value . . . especially nowadays when it’s been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free.”

  The story got complicated when the man who bought the album was revealed as none other than Martin Shkreli, the infamous, cartoonishly sinister pharma bro whose crimes include—among other things—drastically increasing the price of a crucial drug used by HIV patients. Was this a disastrous end to the Wu-Tang’s single-copy scheme? Or did it simply prove their point that if you put music at the mercy of the market, the result would be ugly?

  Cyrus Bozorgmehr’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: The Untold Story of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Million-Dollar Secret Album, the Devaluation of Music, and America’s New Public Enemy No. 1 promises a definitive insider’s account of this saga. An advisor on the album, Bozorgmehr begins his story with the initial meetings between RZA and the album’s Morocco-based, Wu-affiliated producer Cilvaringz (that’s “Silver Rings” for the unaffiliated) that eventually spawned the concept.

  In one 2004 rendezvous, RZA and Cilvaringz traveled together to Egypt, climbed one of the Great Pyramids, and looked out through history. “Eternity rushed in”:

  As they sat, heads bowed to the dynasty that demanded such immortality and the forgotten craftsman who forged it, they marveled at the precision, the detail, the skill, the art, and above all the permanence. . . . Here on the pillars of time, the third eye opened. ‘Someday, we need to do something together that lasts through the ages,’ whispered Cilvaringz.

  The book is full of passages like this. Bozorgmehr doesn’t seem interested—or capable—of telling the story without getting sidetracked.

  In 2013, Bozorgmehr enters the picture by way of a 3 a.m. phone call from one “Mr. S,” who hires him as an advisor to the project (who “Mr. S” is or works for is never revealed). Although he accepts the assignment, Bozorgmehr is an unlikely choice—the author turns out to be a hip-hop neophyte. At one point, he recalls getting hammered with Cilvaringz during a late-night party in a Manhattan Shaolin temple where RZA plays chess. He didn't recognize the music playing over the sound system: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Wu-Tang Clan’s definitive album.

  Once the single-copy album is complete and the strategy is settled, how to actually publicize and auction the album must be squared by Bozorgmehr, Cilvaringz, and RZA. These procedural sections plod along as calls are made, meetings are taken, and various dead-end ideas are proposed. Shaolin’s brighter moments emerge when the genuine novelty of the single-copy experiment spins other unique ideas into its orbit.

  One of the first proposals to purchase the album comes, via email, from a “Mr. Scaramanga Silk,” with a maximum offer of one million dollars. He envisions a Shaolin Kung Fu master shattering the physical album into one million pieces as an event, followed by a world tour of said fragments, which would be available for purchase for £1 each. “The real debate,” Mr. Silk concludes, “will then ensue as to whether or not the owner (myself) made a duplicate of the album before the event. Only I will know.”

  When MoMA PS1 arranges for a private listening session of the album, we are invited to wonder: How would you listen to a piece of music if you assumed you could only hear it one time? “People were hearing a piece of music that they might never hear again, and in some ways, it was a trip back to a time before recording technology even existed,” Bozorgmehr remembers. “Everyone in that room knew it was now or never.”

  While the novelty of the album strategy is intriguing, the stakes of the book, and of the album itself, keep shifting. What is it that Bozorgmehr, RZA, and Cilvaringz really hope to achieve by selling this single-copy album for millions? What are the costs of failure? Bozorgmehr offers a rotating list of their hopes and inspirations, but they land as interchangeable, fungible.

  By the time Shkreli purchases the album, Wu-Tang Clan has two million dollars in their pockets, but their artistic statement, meant to uphold the value of music in the twenty-first century, has been engulfed by clickbait sensationalism. Shkreli adds insult to injury by publicly attacking members of Wu-Tang Clan when they criticize his unapologetic drug-hiking. “I fucking make money,” Shkreli says in an interview. “That’s what I do. That’s why I can fucking afford a fucking $2 million album. What do you think I do, make cookies?” In a Bloomberg profile revealing his identity as the buyer of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, Shkreli joked that he wasn’t even planning to listen to the album. In a livestream from his apartment, he used the innermost CD case, removed from its immaculately carved silver container, as a drink coaster.

  Processing this turn of events for the high-minded experiment, RZA and Bozorgmehr argue that the buyers of art need not be “good” people. But the flip side to a single-copy album is that it is also a single-owner album; the owner can tarnish the work itself.

  As Bozorgmehr reflects on the outcome, he seems to plead with his advisees, RZA and Cilvaringz, from the future:

  “You didn’t make that kind of money adopting orphans, and people might argue that you didn’t buy rap albums at that price unless you were an egomaniac. . . . I desperately wanted our side to come out and say, THIS WAS THE ARTISTIC STATEMENT. It’s a clear symbol of what will happen unless we support our artists as a society by paying them a fair price and respecting the music we love.”

  Implicit is the fact that they did not come out with such a strong statement when outside attention on the project was at its most focused, rather allowing the media narrative to cast its own verdict.

  The earnest ideals and artful impulses that birthed Once Upon a Time in Shaolin have been obfuscated many times over by now, reducing the album to pop-culture trivia or a case study in novel marketing. Meanwhile, trial reports of the “pharma bro” in mainstream media repeatedly thrust his name back into the spotlight. Shkreli's purchase of the single-copy album is consistently cited in reports on his latest exploits, the experiment living on as a footnote to the crimes and stunts of one very freaky white-collar criminal.

  Chris Ruen is a writer based in Brooklyn and the author of Freeloading: How Our Insatiable Hunger for Free Content Starves Creativity (OR Books, 2012).

• Bookmunch
  https://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/not-without-its-issues-once-upon-a-time-in-shaolin-by-cyrus-bozorgmehr/
  Word count: 628

  NOVEMBER 9, 2017BOOKMUNCH
  “Not without its issues” – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Cyrus Bozorgmehr
  “Take a kid with a dream. A legendary hip hop group. A cultural crisis that saw social and technological changes reshape the economics and experience of music. Six years of secret recordings. A casing worthy of a king. A single artefact. Hallowed establishment institutions. An iconoclastic auction house. The world’s foremost museum of modern art. A bidding war. Endless crisis of conscience. An angry mob. A furious beef. A sale. A villain of Lex Luthor-like proportions. Bill Murray. The FBI. The internet gone fucking wild.”

  Somewhere in the climactic section of this oddball work of non-fiction is a paragraph that sums up the promise of this book. Seriously, how good does all of that sound? The story of the single copy album (the titular Once Upon a Time) that the Wu-Tang Clan put out to the highest bidder only to find it being purchased by America’s number one asshole.

  Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, written by Cyrus Bozorgmehr is a book for which the term “not without its issues” was invented. He’s a knowledgable, insightful guide through the story, and he manages to get across at least the very core of the idea that The Wu Tang Clan were going for when they decided on the single copy album; he’s a funny, loud character and the book reads like a guy at a party telling you his wildest story.

  The problem is, you sort of want the guy to go away and stop.

  Bozorgmehr is an exuberant storyteller, but one who remains at an arm’s length throughout the story. He seems to be more on the periphery of the most interesting moments rather than in the mix, and occasionally I found myself questioning how much of a right he had to tell this story. There’s a scene midway through the book which finds him and Cilvaringz, a producer on the album, travelling through airport security. Bozorgmehr has a few issues getting through customs, but Cilvaringz gets called off for a “random search”. What happens there? We don’t know, as Bozorgmehr never relays anything to us that he isn’t directly involved in. Too often I found myself asking, is this a story about The Wu Tang Clan, or Bozorgmehr, and too often I found myself feeling a distance between the author and the project.

  Even more troublesome is the section in which Martin Shkreli appears. America’s public enemy number one, and the guy who winds up buying the album. Those who know little about his background won’t come away with much of an idea of him after reading the book. Bozorgmehr tells you Shkreli’s story, that’s for sure, but his own personal opinion of the guy remains somewhat ambiguous, which is strange when our narrator up until that point has had an opinion about just about everything else. There are some moments when I felt that Bozorgmehr had a kind of respect for Shkreli.

  Once Upon a Time in Shaolin then, reads like the evaluation of an arts project rather than the rollercoaster ride that we’re promised. The broad sweeps of it are all there, but it’s not quite as interesting as the author wants you to think.

  Any Cop?: The story remains fascinating. One album sold at auction to the worst human being alive. It’s a cinematic, compelling narrative even when you just read the Wikipedia page about it. The book never quite justifies its own existence though, so mark this down as a maybe.

  Daniel Carpenter

• Noisey
  https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/mb788n/wu-tang-clan-once-time-shaolin-book-interview-cyrus-bozorgmehr-2017
  Word count: 1783

  QUOTED: "The whole thing was a nightmare for me. I'm from the illegal rave scene, where we just did shit for free. Initially when I heard about the project, I thought it was a horror show, a bling cash grab. But after meeting RZA and Cilvaringz, hearing where they were coming from, I changed my mind."

  The Inside Story of Wu-Tang Clan's Single Copy Album You'll Never Hear
  Kit Caless

  Oct 18 2017, 9:01am
  After becoming RZA's advisor, British writer Cyrus Bozorgmehr wrote a book on 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' and the value of music today.

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  By now, you know the story. Only three people in the world have heard Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin in its entirety—maybe four, if you count VICE writer Allie Conti. Two of those people are RZA and producer Cilvaringz. The third is Martin Shkreli, infamous, deeply hated pharmabro. The point Wu-Tang were trying to make, auctioning off a single silver-encased copy of the record, was that music had become devalued because it was so freely available. If they could make something more exclusive, could they say it had more intrinsic value? If music can be elevated to the level of art, then perhaps sometimes it should be treated as such.

  So the group then it sold to Martin Shkreli for $2 million, after previewing snippets of the album at MOMA PS1, just before Shkreli became world famous for jacking up by 5000 percent the price of a drug that can help people living with AIDS and other autoimmune diseases. Since that point, the album's become part of musical folklore. British writer Cyrus Bozorgmehr was as close to the making of this album as possible. His book, also called Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, recounts the entire story behind the album, from conception to major PR disaster, and reads like a crime caper that can captivate Wu-Tang and non-Wu fans alike. The book has a lot to say about how society currently values music and as an insider-outsider, Bozorgmehr manages to straddle all worlds in a very funny tale. We sat down with Cyrus, a man who gesticulates with enough energy to power a small village, at a London bookshop cafe to find out more.

  Noisey: This is quite a far out story, unbelievable at times. Like you getting drunk in a Shaolin temple with RZA, or the album's concept coming about on top of the Pyramid of Khufu. Is it all true?
  Cyrus Bozorgmehr: Absolutely. There are pictures. Here you go. [shows me pictures on phone]. I wouldn't have been so naff as to make this sort of thing up. This is not a work of fiction—this is our story.

  Do you think the project succeeded in its aims, to start a debate about the devaluation of music and where it's positioned in the art spectrum?
  Yes and no. I think its afterlife, post-Shkreli, has colored that intention. I was at a Q&A recently and someone said, "why don't you try and get the Guggenheim to buy it off Shkreli?" But at this stage, no one is going to touch it. Before Martin bought it, the jury was still out—we hadn't succeeded and we hadn't failed. I'm not sure it's failed, still. But it's become too pulp fiction now. With the more it gets identified with him, the further we get away from our initial point we were making.

  Most big money is dirty. If you are going to put something out there at a high price, for auction, there must have been a sense that the buyer, may have obscured the point you were trying to make.
  I had leveled with that soon after I came on board with the project—some rich bloke was always going to buy this album. But at the same time, it wasn't about the buyer. Particularly at the beginning stages, it was about creating that debate about the value of music. The sale was the end point. People like Elon Musk or Ben Horowitz were the guys that fit our imagined profile, not the aristocratic elites. We thought someone who might be a bit of a maverick would buy it. But we weren't prepared for Shkreli.

  How did the listening session work at PS1? Who did you invite to hear those extracts?
  It was weird. You had the most random collection of people in there. Arab Sheiks, billionaires, the press and of course, we were very conscious of bringing along some normal hip hop heads, some regular fans. So we ran this competition on a New York radio show and we got a bunch of regular people who had never been to the MOMA to come along. It was amazing when the music started. In the age of everything, everywhere, all the time, an ephemeral moment occurred. This was how music used to be before recording was invented, where you are taken on a trip there and now, never to be experienced again. What do you do? Do you close your eyes and try to use your brain as a recording device? Do you think, 'fuck it, I'm gonna own this and get up and dance'? Watching different people react differently was fascinating.

  What does it mean to you, personally, to know that diehard fans might never hear the album?
  The whole thing was a nightmare for me. I'm from the illegal rave scene, where we just did shit for free. Initially when I heard about the project, I thought it was a horror show, a bling cash grab. But after meeting RZA and Cilvaringz, hearing where they were coming from, I changed my mind. There is a symbiotic relationship between fan and artist. But there's also a flip side—at what point can an artist not do what they want? Are you really completely obligated, bound to your fans?

  The whole thing feels like a reverse KLF move…
  It's funny, neither Cilvaringz nor RZA really knew about KLF. KLF was quite a UK phenomenon I think. I told them the KLF story, but no matter how big an artist you are in rap, you don't burn a million dollars. That's the difference between a middle class art school approach to money and one that's grafted up from the streets. You have to make your statement some other, but equally controversial, way.

  In the book you write about the idea of a "sense of entitlement" in music listeners. Where do you think that comes from? How do you verbalize the way we're willing to pay a load of money for some things, but not others?
  The idea that you are happy to pay $3 for a coffee but not for a tune is bonkers. It's insane. The internet was this mad, anarchic, democratizing force—from the very start, so much was freely shared. Things have changed a little bit very recently, but back when we started the Once Upon A Time process it wasn't like that at all. Spotify, for all its infinitesimal royalties, at least means artists are getting some money.

  It all comes down to the letter "s": the difference between art and arts. Arts is inclusive of all forms of creativity. Art retreats into this elitist space. If you bang a couple of bin lids together, cover yourself in paint and video it, you could put that in the Tate. But if you've made a blinding tune, that's not welcome. I don't think music necessarily needs to be perceived as art, in that way. It doesn't need to be sold at Christie's Auction House. But I think we do need a little bit of a kick up the arse.

  I interviewed Chuck D once, years ago, and I asked him, "you guys are pretty extreme, did you start extreme so you would end up at a compromise? Was it a social negotiating tactic?"—in the sense that you when you barter your position, you don't start at a middle ground. But he said, no, "we were born extreme". This is the only way. No one got anywhere, to start with, by having a measured discussion about something. Ultimately, we didn't want no one to hear the album. We put an exhibition clause in the contract that would mean it would encourage the buyer to hold listening sessions. And Shkreli did say, initially, that's what he was going to do. He was genuinely star struck by RZA. He came across as an enthusiastic rap fan.

  How do you feel about him putting the album (since taken down) up on eBay for resale?
  As ever, he did it with dramatic timing and went to prison the next day. There were bids. I was contacted by this 18-year-old kid who had the top bid on eBay. I contacted Shkreli's lawyer, and he confirmed that he'd seen proof of funds. I was shocked. But it soon became very clear that, rather than being a Wu-Tang fan, he was a Martin Shkreli fan. And I didn't see that coming! He was even mispronouncing stuff about the Wu, he clearly didn't know that much about them. He was a Shkreli fan.

  What do you think is going to happen to the album?
  No idea. For all I know, it's sold. Shkreli's lawyer is being cagey with us. God knows what is going to happen there. We've also had people contact us who are Wu-Tang fans saying they will buy it. The whole contradiction is that we kind of trusted Shkreli—we still do, on a business level. He stuck to the contract. Whoever buys it now is going to want to break that contract. They want to be the hero. Now, everyone sees it as liberating it from Shkreli. People have forgotten what the plan for it was in the first place. They are contacting us because they think RZA is going to be thrilled that they are buying the album to release it. Like they are rescuing the album from the devil. That wasn't the idea. But we've lost control of it completely. Which is great in a way because that is the essence of art.

  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 is out now via Jacaranda Books in the UK and Macmillan in the US.

• Pretty Menace
  http://www.prettymenace.com/once_upon-time-shaolin-book-review/
  Word count: 892

  QUOTED: "Once Upon A Time In Shaolin” is filled with rousing creative concepts and art advocacy that will make you scream: 'Hell Yes!' Bozorgmehr is genuine and as transparent as possible considering the subject of all this madness is a mysterious (possibly magical) Hip-Hop relic."
  "It’s a quick read and worth the time."

  “ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHAOLIN” BOOK REVIEWED
  OCTOBER 11, 2017 ZURI WARD BOOK REVIEWS, CYRUS BOZORGMEHR, ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHAOLIN
  A few weeks ago, I spent a Saturday with my mom. She knows I love Barnes & Noble, so when we spotted one, she insisted that we go inside. Once there, she demanded that I pick out a book that she could purchase for me. I had just finished up “The Autobiography of Gucci Mane”, and had not decided on what was next on my list. However, when mom insists on spending money, you do not argue.

  All bookworms have sections of the bookstore that they scour for new reading material. I usually browse the music section for a book about Hip-Hop that I don’t already own. This particular Barnes & Noble had 3 books about Hip-Hop. 2 of them I own. One I had never even heard of.

  “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” looked interesting enough. The incredibly long title printed brazenly on the cover sent me dashing over to Moms with a (hopefully) worthy new read in hand. I had not heard the book mentioned, but I was also curious about how the author, Cyrus Bozorgmehr, was qualified to tell such a story.

  Although, as it turns out, Bozorgmehr lived through this entire ordeal, he tells the story like someone retelling the plot of a movie that just changed his or her life. “Once Upon A Time In Shaolin” is a story with all the elements of a Quinton Tarantino movie. So it’s no wonder that Bozorgmehr struggles to grasp details of how this project spun wildly out of control.

  Photo: Ilja Meefout
  The author outlines how a soft caress of fate placed him in the company of RZA and Cilvaringz and made him an integral part of developing Once Upon A Time In Shaolin—their symbolic album and work of art. Rap fans will enjoy learning about how Cilvaringz conceptualized the album’s sound and worked with the members of Wu-Tang to get recreate something that Clan fans would fiend for or despise.

  Cilvaringz’s rise to clandom is a beautiful tale within itself. His relentless pursuit of RZA is worth reading about—it’s incredibly inspiring. Bozorgmehr takes his time here. This is likely to give the reader an idea of the Moroccan producer’s driven (but bullheaded) personality. Cilvaringz headstrong nature lead him to believe that he could sell a music album as a piece of art (and at a hefty price tag) rather than as an $11.99 download that the world will forget days after it’s release.

  The world knows this mysterious album landed in the hands of “the most hated man in America,” Martin Shkreli. However, few of us know how he finessed his way into buying what was destined to be the most important piece of music in modern history. Bozorgmehr describes the sale and the circus that ensued soon after, and it will piss you off. If you didn’t hate Shkreli prior to reading this book, you will curse him mid-sentence if you crack this one open.

  The real page-turning content, however, occurs as Bozorgmehr describes the meticulous decision-making behind the album’s “roll-out” and sale. While Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’s guardians undoubtedly had an investor that would soon be checking for his return, they considered Wu-Tang fans and the integrity of the art at every turn. One can only assume those considerations are what made for such a compelling roller coaster of events.

  If this book is lacking anything, it’s more insight into the album’s content and the Clan’s involvement. It is likely that those gems were left out for legal reasons. Or, Bozorgmehr simply knew his grazing over those topics would only add to the album’s mystique.

  Photo: Bobby Viteri.
  “Once Upon A Time In Shaolin” is filled with rousing creative concepts and art advocacy that will make you scream, “Hell Yes!” Bozorgmehr is genuine and as transparent as possible considering the subject of all this madness is a mysterious (possibly magical) Hip-Hop relic.

  On the back cover of the book, there’s a quote that reads “Once Upon A Time In Shaolin” offers a front-row seat as Wu-Tang Clan’s maverick, idealistic attempt at a statement on the current state of the music industry and the symbiosis of art and money backfires, turning into a surreal caper featuring monumental ambitions, even more monumental egos, Bill Murray, the FBI, replica AK-47s, and yes, arguably the most hated man in America. It’s a music book unlike any other.”

  Paul Fischer never lied. Pick up a copy. It’s a quick read and worth the time.

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