Method Man sat down in Brooklyn on October 16 to hear an album carrying his own verses, more than a decade after it was completed. The Wu-Tang Clan member had contributed to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin without ever hearing its finished form.
The listening session, arranged by PleasrDAO for the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, put before him a hand-carved silver-nickel box containing a 31-track double album and leather-bound liner notes.
The podcast subsequently released two excerpts centred on Method Man, including one at about the 39-minute mark.
His judgment was guarded, though far warmer than his past public criticism. “I could see why people will like this album, and I could see why people will love this album. I don't hate it,” Method Man said.
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He later put it more plainly: “We found out that album isn't as bad as I expected it to be.”
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was recorded in secret between 2007 and 2013. RZA and his protégé Cilvaringz conceived it as a museum piece, rather than a conventional release, and only one physical copy was made.
Legal stipulations meant fans were not supposed to hear it for 88 years.
Method Man had spoken publicly against the album in March 2015. He said his remaining resentment came from the way it had been made and handled, saying he felt “robbed” because it “was done under false pretenses.”
He said he still had a “chip on his shoulder” over its ownership history, which took the record from pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli to a government seizure and then to PleasrDAO.
Shkreli bought the album at auction for $2 million in 2015. The government later seized it as part of a securities fraud case, before PleasrDAO, a digital art collective, bought it from the government for $4 million in 2021.
Method Man gave Cilvaringz credit for work he considered “a valid piece of art”. He said the producer’s work was “on par with some of the stuff that RZA used to do back in the day”.
Yet he also argued that Cilvaringz had been “emulating RZA's sound as much as possible to the point that it got a little mimicky.” Method Man referred to Cilvaringz as a “B member” of Wu-Tang Clan.
The album also includes appearances by Redman and Cher.
The podcast episode and its fragments arrived as The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable, a Netflix documentary centred on the album, premiered on October 16.
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