Netflix Acquires Wu-Tang Documentary 'The Disciple'

Netflix is bringing one of the strangest chapters in Wu-Tang Clan history to a global audience.

Billy Eff is the Content Director for Rolling Stone Canada. An award-winning journalist and columnist, he has previously contributed to outlets including VICE and Urbania. A passionate advocate for underground music and a musician himself, he has conducted several hundred interviews with artists and industry professionals across a wide range of styles and genres over the past 15 years. He is based in Montréal, Québec.

Netflix has acquired The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable, the Sundance-premiering documentary from Oscar-winning filmmaker Joanna Natasegara, and will release the film on October 16.

The documentary follows Dutch-Moroccan rapper and producer Tarik Azzougarh, aka Cilvaringz, whose devotion to Wu-Tang Clan eventually took him from young fan to collaborator until he becomes a member of the group’s extended creative circle. His student-teacher relationship with RZA ultimately led to one of the most unusual music projects of the 21st century.

At the centre of The Disciple is Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the 31-track Wu-Tang project conceived as a deliberate rejection of the economics of the streaming era. Only one official copy of the album was produced, turning a piece of recorded music into something closer to a collectible work of art.

The album’s unusual journey became even more notorious after it was sold in 2015 to real-life supervillain Martin Shkreli for roughly $2 million, much to the group's dismay. The controversial pharmaceutical executive later became the subject of a federal securities-fraud conviction.

Natasegara, who previously won an Oscar with Netflix for The White Helmets, makes her feature directorial debut with the film. She first encountered Cilvaringz while travelling in Morocco and became interested in the story behind the album and the unlikely path that brought him into Wu-Tang’s orbit. RZA serves as an executive producer and contributor, while the documentary explores Cilvaringz’s ambitions, his relationship with Wu-Tang and the questions raised by Once Upon a Time in Shaolin about ownership rights and the value of music in the digital age.

The Disciple: A Wu-Tang Fable arrives on Netflix October 16.

Matt Collyer knows Warped Tour is a festival like no other. For the Planet Smashers frontman, it is part summer camp, part punk rock boot camp, part family reunion, and part survival test. It’s also one of the reasons so many bands from the punk, ska, hardcore, and emo worlds were able to find each other, tour together, and build scenes that reached far beyond their own hometowns.

So as Warped Tour weekend returns, Collyer is going in with the right attitude. Not expecting it to be exactly what it was, but ready to feel that old energy again.

“I’m very excited,” he says. “I mean, it’s not the same Warped Tour. So if we go in thinking that it’s the same Warped Tour as it was 20 years ago when we did it. It changed through those years too.”

Still, what made Warped special was never really the lineup, but the movement. The feeling of sprinting from one stage to another, catching only 15 minutes of a band before racing off to see someone else. It was discovering your new favorite group by accident, watching heroes and unknowns share the same parking lot, the same heat and chaos.

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The Planet Smashers’ first Warped experience was as DIY as it gets. Collyer remembers playing Québec City in the festival’s early days, before the band fully understood what they were walking into.

“We played on the flatbed of a truck,” he says. “And I was like, ‘This is different’. And then we had to do our own merch, but we didn’t know you were supposed to bring a tent. So we were that band in the sun with just a table, and the sun was just pounding down on us.”

They had copies of their early releases, one Planet Smashers shirt design, and no real plan. The shirts sold out almost instantly. Then, an icon walked up. “I just remember Tim Armstrong walked up and I’m like, oh my gosh,” Collyer says. “And he stopped and goes, ‘Hey, are you guys that band that does that song ‘Pierce Me’? I’m like, ‘yes. How the fuck do you know?’”

That, to Collyer, was the magic of Warped Tour. It flattened the hierarchy.

“There was equality throughout the tour, which was really cool,” he says. “Everyone got 30 minutes, no one got more time.”

Nick Farkas, Senior Vice President of booking and events at evenko, who are co-producers of Warped Tour’s Montréal stop, also remembers his first Warped Tour. Back then, he was a young, DIY booker, having co-founded Greenland Productions in 1993. “It really takes me back to the beginning of my career. It was the first real festival we ever did, and we always had an amazing time,“ remembers Farkas. That first year, the festival was being held at the now-shuttered Blue Bonnets horse racing track. “We had sold 3000 tickets, but about 6000 people showed up without tickets, and we hadn't set up a different line for people without tickets. Security had to sort people and create different lines, we were walking around with change and selling tickets directly in the line.“

“That they chose Montréal over another Canadian or American market tells you how important punk rock is to Montréal,“ says Farkas, who is also behind some of Canada's biggest festivals, including Osheaga and Lasso.

Warped Tour also helped bands build real networks between local bands and international ones. Before social media made every scene feel connected, you had to meet people in person. “You met them at Warped Tour. And you just made friends,” Collyer says. “And suddenly you go, oh, I’ve got a friend in Atlanta now. Oh, I’ve got a friend in Charlotte. Oh, I’ve got a friend in Washington. Now you’ve got a tour.”

Despite the fun, surviving Warped Tour as a band was not an easy feat. It was hot, exhausting, smelly, and chaotic. The glamour level was low. Collyer remembers vans, RVs, overnight drives, terrifying highway moments, and trying to find a usable shower only to discover that someone had ruined it for everyone. He also remembers losing his voice in Miami because of the heat and the culture of staying up late, yelling, laughing, and hanging out.

Matt Collyer of The Planet Smashers

So what is his advice for surviving the weekend?

First, the obvious one. “Hydrate. You’ve got to stay hydrated,” he says.

He means it. One year, water was hard to come by but energy drinks were everywhere. Their drummer Scott started drinking too much Monster and ended up with a painful inflamed heart sac that bothered him for months.

Second, sunscreen. It might feel basic, but Warped Tour is well-known to be a sunburn factory.

“Obviously, the sunscreen is going to be a lifesaver. I know it’s the end of the summer, but it’s going to get you eventually,” he says.

Third, do not gamble with the bathrooms.

“If you feel you need to go to the washroom, don’t wait,” he says. “Go as fast as you can, they can get pretty nasty very quickly.”

Fourth, buy merch early. Bands, especially those traveling across the border, can only bring so much. If you wait until the end of the day, your size might be gone. “When it’s gone, it’s gone,” Collyer says.

Most importantly, pace yourself. The urge to see everything is part of the fun, but you need to survive long enough to enjoy it. “If you find a slot where there’s a band that you know, a time when there’s no one you’d want to see, take that moment,” he says. “Take a little nap and then go back and get them.”

And if you see band members walking around, be cool. That is part of the point. Warped Tour was built on accessibility, community, and Kevin Lyman’s famous attitude that there is “no room for rock stars.”

Warped Tour returns to Montréal starting tomorrow, featuring The Planet Smashers, Simple Plan, Sublime, and many more.

Ariana Grande on Jan. 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California.

A Los Angeles judge has granted Ariana Grande the fast-track subpoena power she says is crucial to identifying hackers who allegedly stole her unreleased music, photos and videos, then sold the material on the “dark web” for “significant sums of money.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark H. Epstein ruled Wednesday that because Grande currently has no way to identify the alleged hackers, she doesn’t have to comply with a waiting period tied to providing notice to the defendants in her recently filed invasion of privacy lawsuit.

“The 20-day waiting period will never run because plaintiff cannot — even with reasonablediligence — [determine] the defendant’s identity without this discovery, and therefore will never beable to serve defendants,” the judge wrote in his minute order obtained by Rolling Stone.

In her application for expedited discovery, Grande says she needed to accelerate her legal lawsuit, first filed on July 27, because if she doesn’t quickly identify the alleged hackers, “their hacking, theft, dissemination, sales, and publication of [her] content will continue.” She argues that any delay subjects her to “the increased risk that additional content will be stolen or sold, and that the account, subscriber, and login data needed to identify defendants will be lost.”

In her lawsuit and related court filings, Grande claims the alleged hackers broke into the personal digital accounts and devices of her photographers and producers using stolen login credentials and phishing schemes. She claims they then helped themselves to her private creative output, including unreleased masters, demos, and recording-session footage.

Grande and her lawyers claim that in 2023 alone, 45 unreleased songs she was working on were stolen and leaked. Since her 2011 music debut, hundreds of similar leaks have occurred, causing her “irreparable harm,” her filings allege. Grande alleges the stolen materials have been hosted or published on platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Discord, TikTok, Leaked.CX, YouTube, WeTransfer, Pillowcase, Pixeldrain, WeSendIt, Krakenfiles, and Dropbox.

“Despite an ongoing, multi-year investigation undertaken by plaintiff, including repeated preservation and takedown demands to relevant platforms, and because defendants are actively and sophisticatedly concealing their identity – such as by using multiple, pseudonymous accounts across multiple internet platforms, impersonating domain names, and completing transactions through peer-to-peer payment platforms that do not publicly disclose subscriber or account-holder identity – plaintiff has been unable to determine defendants’ true identities,” her new filing states.

Grande and her lawyers argue she desperately needs immediate discovery subpoena power to obtain the business records needed to identify perpetrators “hiding behind anonymous accounts across various platforms.”

The case is due back in court on Jan. 25 for a status hearing.

In a February 2024 interview with the Zach Sang Show, Grande addressed the leak of “Fantasize,” explaining that she had written the song for a television show, not for herself. “So ‘Fantasize’ comes out … Crazy,” she said. “Was stolen — thieves, pirates, illegal. I’ll pay you more to put it away, to get it back.”

The capital has a brand new concert hall, as History Ottawa will open its doors for the first time this Thursday, transforming the venue at Rideau Street and Sussex Drive into a 2,000-capacity destination for live music and special events.

The National Capital Commission acquired the landmark corner property in 2024, later enlisting promoter Live Nation Canada to oversee the two-year refit. The sleek, two-level room shares a brand with Toronto’s History but the Ottawa venue has a style all of its own.

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One of its key features is the configuration of the stage, which ensures patrons are never more than about 30 metres from the performers. “It’s all about being able to see your artist up close and personal, and being able to feel the experience of not only the artist, but also the person next to you,” Ali Shafaee, regional vice-president for Live Nation Canada, told the Ottawa Citizen.

This is an intentional nod to the “up-close” ethos championed by celebrity partner Drake, whose creative team also curated the furnishings for a private, on-site green-room equipped to host A-list entourages. “These venues are where our stories are born, elevated, shared, and hopefully revisited. I will be there to drop off my personal touch to Ottawa soon,” said Drake on Instagram.“In creating this I think about every artist that had to play a venue and ask themselves “is this what making it feels like” because I know we respect all the heritage and all the years of inheritance but hope to create a better experience for our budding artists moving forward.”

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Opening-night honors belong to American roots-rock favourites The Wallflowers, whose sold-out performance kicks off a calendar that already lists more than 30 shows. Among them: Kaleo, Modest Mouse, Marianas Trench and Toronto cover band Dwayne Gretzky. Around 150 events a year are planned, potentially welcoming some 300,000 visitors into the ByWard Market annually.

In addition to the many other things they have in common, Alex Lifeson and Miley Cyrus have both talked about quitting weed

Rush’s Alex Lifeson spent decades as one of rock’s most brilliantly productive stoners. He always played concerts sober, but half-joked to me in 2015 that he wrote “80 percent” of his oft-labyrinthine parts for Rush’s music with THC assistance. But this year, with a high-pressure reunion tour looming, he finally quit weed, as he revealed in our recent cover story interview, published in collaboration with Rolling Stone Canada. “I started having these negative feelings about my confidence and about what was ahead of us. We were halfway through the process. It’s too late to jump off this ship that’s screaming across the sea. And I thought, this is interfering with the way my brain should be working, and the kind of focus and discipline that all of a sudden I really wanted to have in my life.”

The Rush legend is far from the first musician to publicly talk about quitting weed in some fashion — though only some of them stuck to it, and one of them was totally making it up.

Willie Nelson (sort of)Nelson said in a November 2019 interview with San Antonio’s KSAT that he was done with smoking weed, 65 years after his first joint. “I have abused my lungs quite a bit in the past,” he said. He canceled tour dates that summer over breathing problems. His publicist soon clarified that Nelson had given up smoking, not cannabis itself: he still used edibles and even vaped.Lukas NelsonWillie’s son, Lukas Nelson, quit more definitively, swearing off weed and alcohol around 2023. “I wouldn’t call it sober completely, because I’ll still do mushrooms,” he said on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast in 2025. He explained that his dad had no problem with his decision: “My dad respects individuality. He respects being yourself. He and I both now don’t smoke weed. I don’t think it mattered to him either way… When I was smoking I’d smoke six, seven joints a day. I was so into weed.”

Paul McCartneyIn 2012, 48 years after Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to marijuana in a New York hotel room, McCartney told me in a cover-story interview that he was finally done smoking weed. “I did a lot, and it was enough,” he said. “I smoked my share. When you’re bringing up a youngster, your sense of responsibility does kick in, if you’re lucky, at some point. Enough’s enough – you just don’t seem to think it’s necessary.” That said, various paparazzi photos, videos, and accounts from other celebrities in the intervening years suggest that maybe, just maybe, the guy who wrote “Got to Get You Into My Life” about weed might have changed his mind.

Snoop Dogg (except not)“After much consideration and conversation with my family, I’ve decided to give up smoke,” Snoop posted in November 2023. It seemed vaguely possible, since he had mentioned in an interview earlier that year that becoming a grandfather made him want to slow down. Soon enough, however, a company that sells smokeless fire pits annoyed the entire Internet by revealing that it had hired Snoop as its “smokesman” and that the whole thing was a stunt.

Miley CyrusCyrus told Billboard in May 2017 that she stopped smoking to make her album Younger Now. “I want to be super clear and sharp,” she said. A month later, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, she gave a second explanation, detailing a dream where she got too high and died during an SNL monologue. She was smoking again by early 2019, explaining that she got high with her mom. In 2025, though, she told Zane Lowe that she was done with all drugs and alcohol: “Sobriety is really like my god.”

Justin BieberIn his 2020 docuseries Seasons, he traced a weed habit back to a joint at age 13, and said he’d given it up. “I realized that I had to stop,” he said. “I don’t think it’s bad. It’s just that for me, it can be a dependency.” By 2025, he was posting images that seemed to show him smoking a bong. “Justin is having fun, vibing out and yes, he smokes weed like everyone else,” a source close to Bieber told People that year. “But everything he does is being weaponized against him.”

SZASZA quit weed in February 2022 and mentioned it on Twitter almost in passing, noting that her dreams had gotten wild. A year later she marked the anniversary, adding “don’t miss it at all. Never thought I’d say that.”

Neil YoungYoung quit on doctor’s orders in January 2011, framing it to the New York Times as an experiment: “I did it for 40 years. Now I want to see what it’s like to not do it.” In his memoir Waging Heavy Peace, he wrote that he was having trouble writing songs without weed. “The straighter I am, the more alert I am,” he wrote, “the less I know myself and the harder it is to recognize myself. I need a little grounding in something and I am looking for it everywhere.” In 2014, Young told me he had started up again in moderation, adding that it didn’t matter: “”I’m still high from the Seventies.”David CrosbyWhen Crosby got clean from drugs in the 1980s, he included weed in his abstinence. “I did 14 and a half years absolutely sober,” he told Cannabis Now. Eventually, he decided cannabis wasn’t part of his problem, and started smoking again. On the eve of his 80th birthday he called himself “just another stoner, man.”

Kid CudiCudi, who called himself a “lonely stoner” on 2008’s “Day ‘n’ Nite,” first quit weed in 2011. In November 2024, he entered rehab for various substances, telling Billboard that he had been smoking 15 blunts a day: “It truly ruled my life.” He abstained completely for two months, then brought it back, limiting the habit to evenings and weekends. “I’m not smoking nowhere near as much weed as I was smoking before. A joint lasts me all day, damn near. So my relationship has changed with that in a major way. And I’m just more interested in being sober a lot more and being more present.”

Australia's most legendary rock band has hit Canada and is pursuing their trek out east. AC/DC fans will have a new way to celebrate the band’s return up North, with an official PWR/UP pop-up experience set to accompany every Canadian stop on the group’s 2026 stadium tour.

The temporary spaces will open in Montréal, Toronto and Winnipeg, offering fans a chance to immerse themselves in the AC/DC world before heading to the stadium. The pop-ups will feature limited-edition merchandise, collectibles, themed food and drinks, photo opportunities and tour-inspired displays.

The experience will also give fans access to exclusive city merchandise ahead of its wider release. Limited quantities of official event shirts and posters will be available at each location one day before they go on sale online or at the concert venue.

There will be plenty of opportunities to win prizes, including concert tickets, merchandise packages and VIP items. A replica Angus Young guitar will also travel between the pop-up locations, where fans can enter for a chance to win it. The guitar will later be signed by Young in Philadelphia before being awarded to one eligible entrant. Each city will also host a PWR/UP preview event before opening to the public. One hundred fans will be selected at random in each market to attend alongside media and invited guests, with attendees receiving a special gift.

The band started their Canada tour in Edmonton before making their way to Vancouver last week. The PWR/UP tour continues in the next few weeks in the Bible belt, before making its way back to Montréal in September, with their pop-up taking place at mythical venue Foufounes Électriques on September 11-12. On September 15 and 16, they'll set up shop at the Steam Whistle brewery and Winnipeg, MB on September 19 and 20 and The Pyramid.