Once Upon a Time in Shaolin

April 10, 2017
In this utterly candid work, Bozorgmehr, the senior adviser of the pioneering hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, recalls the evolution of the band’s controversial album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. He raises key questions of “the disposable product” in the current record industry, the years it takes to create a viable album, and trying to surface in an endless flood of music only to be “drowned in a sea of white noise.” Bozorgmehr is gracious in acknowledging the global success of Wu-Tang Clan, but somewhat conflicted in the marketing process around the RZA-blessed project of a sole copy of the silver-covered album, intended to be sold for millions. Bids poured in from high rollers, including a rich Nigerian offering millions in livestock, and the one-of-a-kind “piece of contemporary art” was brought by the infamous Martin Shkreli, whose company later incredibly hiked the cost of an essential AIDS drug. Bozorgmehr’s stirring account gives readers the insider’s view 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.

June 1, 2017
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 insider's 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)