The press around Wu-Tang Clan’s new album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin…, has been staggering. It’s become the stuff of legend. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin… has become the T206 Honus Wagner of the music industry and it’s only existed for about a year. And much like the most-coveted baseball card of all-time, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin… was officially sold for a rumored $2 million. The album went to a “private American collector,” a guy who earlier this year put his name in the running to win Douchebag of the Year for 2015.
Martin Shkreli, otherwise derogatorily known as “Pharma Bro,” is the guy who now owns the only copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin…, to the ire of almost every Wu-Tang Clan fan everywhere, every person who followed this album from concept to sale, and everybody else who has known for four months how much of a bastard Martin Shkreli is. In September, Pharma Bro pissed off the world when his company bought the drug daraprim, a 62-year-old pharmaceutical used to treat protozoal infections, and hiked the per-pill price from $13.50 to $750.
Now this guy owns a record that will only be printed once this century and will not be available for commercial distribution until the year 2103, as per legal agreement.
Even before the auction, the manner in which Wu-Tang Clan’s de facto leader Robert “RZA” Diggs and album producer Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh decided to release the record was the subject of criticism. Even Clifford “Method Man” Smith, a member of Wu-Tang Clan, criticized the decision to print only one copy that was to be auctioned.
Fans began to speculate who the buyer might be, with some suspecting it would be director Quentin Tarantino, who is a huge Wu-Tang fan, or venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, who has been very open and has written extensively about his love of rap music.
Two disgruntled fans even put together a Kickstarter campaign to buy Once Upon a Time in Shaolin… with the intention of giving it away for free. Their hope was to keep “some billionaire’s kid spending his dad’s money” from merely “[collecting] a trophy,” who will then “keep the album to himself” while Wu-Tang’s “fans the world over” suffer. Unfortunately, they only raised about $15,000.
However, the worst part of this story isn’t that Pharma Bro bought the record. Incidentally, according to RZA, an agreement was reached in May that he would be the guy to buy it and because the agreement was reached before Martin Shkreli’s “I should be at Beta Theta Pi” face was splashed across the Internet, RZA has “decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.” No, the worst part of this is that Shkreli seems to have no pressing desire to listen to it unless his morale drops. From Bloomberg:
“‘I could be convinced to listen to it earlier if Taylor Swift wants to hear it or something like that,’ Shkreli says. ‘But for now, I think I’m going to kind of save it for a rainy day.'”
The disgruntled Kickstarter fans were on to something. Their concern that someone was going to buy Once Upon a Time in Shaolin… merely to collect a trophy appears to be what’s actually happening.
Furthermore, Shkreli hadn’t even heard Once Upon a Time in Shaolin… when he decided to drop the money on it back in May. Only RZA and Cilvaringz have heard the record in its entirety. Shkreli said he made the decision to purchase the record, which again must be stated is said to have cost about $2 million, when the auction-house representative told him that doing so would give him the opportunity to “rub shoulders with celebrities and rappers who would want to hear it.” And if Shkreli’s need to buy things as a means to generate popularity for himself wasn’t enough, he tweeted this…
https://twitter.com/MartinShkreli/status/674594563131105280
… which has since been followed by a series of tweets about buying private albums for other artists, re-tweets of people criticizing him, and this gem:
https://twitter.com/MartinShkreli/status/674727539810652161
That’s a pretty ballsy statement for a guy who just spent $2 million on a record he may never listen to, and further, may never release for free on the Internet, even though he is allowed to do so and should, at least for the sake of the millions of Wu-Tang fans who have been itching for this album.
Unfortunately, since Martin Shkreli is the guy who holds the most-valuable record in existence, I cannot say I am confident that I’ll ever get to hear it. By the time 2103 rolls around, 116 years will have passed since I was born and I am in no way confident I will live that long.
Once again, Pharma Bro has trespassed against us all.
Featured image by Coup d’Oreille, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
