Wu-Tang Clan affiliated producer Cilvaringz details the making of the group's
one-copy album and avoiding leaks.
In a recently released video from Forbes, Senior Editor Zack O’Malley
Greenburg interviewed several individuals involved in the making of the Wu-Tang
Clan’s Once Upon A Time In Shaolin while visiting North Africa. Set primarily in
the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, Greenburg speaks with the album’s producer and
past Wu-Tang Clan collaborator Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzourgarh.
“When a new
idea like this meets the public arena, it kind of takes a life on its own,”
Cilvaringz said of the concept.
“I didn’t really tell anyone until I
really had the idea of what it was going to be,” he said. “Even then it was so
difficult to really define, ‘Okay, this is the idea, this is where it comes
from, and this is what it’s gonna do.’ To every Clan member whom I called once
the idea was kind of set, it took an hour or more to really break it down.
That’s not because they didn’t get it. They got it. They couldn’t see the
greatness of it, or the importance of it rather, until they had the whole
picture. You’re gonna get that in a nine people crew. It’s a big crew, a lot of
opinions, visions on things. No one was against it and some brothers were
really, really for it and said, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’”
Explaining the process of actually producing and
recording the record, Cilvaringz explained an intricate process designed to
avoid any potential
leaks.
“The production of
the album was done here in Marakesh beforehand and it was in a very
unconventional way because I produced the music, I selected the beats,” the producer said. “First, [I]
sent them to RZA for reviewal. Song titles were already made up. Based on that, [the]
selection was made as to who has to be on which record. With that we went to
Staten Island, New York and basically got the guys together. The recordings,
they weren’t allowed to have, they had beats—sometimes they actually had beats
that had the similar sound but wasn’t the actual beat. Had the same BPM, the
same speed and everything, but
they would rhyme with something that would sound...much later. I just couldn’t
afford for it to leak. They were
never given the final copies including RZA.”
Speaking on the aesthetic of
the album itself initially, Cilvaringz described sacrificing the potential
career clout involved in the one copy concept.
“Raw,” he said of the
snippet and the album’s sound. “Rugged. Even the way we mixed it. Even the way
we mastered it. We used Ken Lewis for the mixing who's done Watch The Throne,
Twisted Fantasy [from] Kanye. He’s done some big acts that had a bit of the
rough sound, the dirty gritty sound. The whole approach of it had to be ‘93 to
‘97.”
Asked directly about balancing the intricacy of making the album
with the possibility that very few people might hear it, Cilvaringz detailed
feeling persecuted by Wu-Tang Clan fans.
“I thought about that a couple
times because I’m very proud of the album,” he said. “I feel that the sacrifice
is greater. I truly believe, despite everybody thinking that this is some great
publicity stunt or marketing ploy, this has been a genuine concept from the
get-go. So it happened to get a lot of publicity. Great. But it is a genuine
concept with a genuine core and a genuine goal. If I have to sacrifice the
record for a greater good, to get the point across, to make the statement—I’m
being crucified by Wu-Tang fans everyday...They go for me, and I understand it.
It’s understandable. But I really believe in this approach. I think it’s very
necessary. I think people are responding to it in a very interesting
way.”
Elsewhere in the mini-documentary, Greenburg interviews the man largely responsible for the
album’s bespoke and one-off packaging.
“Nothing’s mass made,” Yahya, a
British-Moroccan artist commissioned with the box’s making said. “I couldn’t
really work out how we could actually do something together. They said, ‘No we’d
just need one.’ That’s the key to the whole thing but for us to explain we’re
gonna have to sign you up to a confidentiality clause. I said, ‘Sure, sounds a bit of fun.’”
“It’s a
box within a box within a box,” Yahya says as he unveils the packaging for
Greenburg and the camera. “This has been carved in nickel silver. We decided to encase the world famous logo
of the Wu-Tang Clan within...treated as an art-piece which it is. Inside you
have another box, and inside this is encased the CD with their special casing.
But for security reasons, we have taken it out so today what you see is just the actual artwork which houses
the CD.”
“We had about ten guys working over three months from start to finish to make it. From the
people who initially carved the metal, flattened it, textured the surface,
constructed the wood, put it all together, mount it, finish it, line it with
leather. You have about ten different skill sets needed in order to make this
one box.”
Near the end of the video, billionaire founder of Virgin
Records Richard Branson offered a quick comment on the group’s
concept.
“I love the idea,” he said. “I think anything that people can collect as collector’s items, it
makes life more fun. I expect it will end up being the most copied single copy
of an album ever. I take my hat off to them for a really fun idea.”
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