RZA Regrets Selling One-Of-A-Kind Wu-Tang Album To Martin Shkreli
The saga of the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin has been told and retold as each new twist unfolds, but in case you’re new to this story: Wu-Tang mastermind RZA recorded the album in secret with co-producer Cilvaringz over six years. In 2015, they auctioned the only existing copy, packaged in an elaborate silver jewel-encrusted box, to disgraced “pharma bro” and former post-hardcore benefactor Martin Shkreli for $2 million with the provision that it could not be commercially exploited until 2103. After Shkreli’s securities fraud conviction, the album was seized by the US government, who sold it last summer to a cryptocurrency collective.
Shkreli and the members of Wu-Tang got very publicly testy with each other during his time owning the sole copy of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin. It was a messy ordeal. And now, as HipHopDX points out, RZA says he regrets it.
In an interview with Ebro Darden on New York radio station Hot 97, RZA said the album ended up “in the wrong hands,” adding that Shkreli “made the deal before it was revealed of his character, of his personality, and all of the insidious things he would go on to do.” He is optimistic that the PleasrDAO crypto collective will feature the album at events such as museum installations and album listening experiences, as RZA had always envisioned: “[Those things] were not going to be able to happen with Mr. Shkreli. Now that PleasrDAO has it, there’s opportunity that a lot these beautiful ideas of what this art can be and how it could expand itself in the world and in its own life of itself. I think the possibilities are there now.”
Watch the full interview below.