Famed hip-hop supergroup Wu-Tang Clan spent approximately nine years recording a 31-track album titled Once Upon a Time In Shaolin. Then, this past March, the group made news saying they would sell a single copy only.
In March, the Wu-Tang Clan announced Once Upon A Time in Shaolin... would be available for private sale exclusively through Paddle8, and launched a special site with a provisional track list and interviews with Wu-Tang Clan founding member RZA at paddle8.com/wu-tang. RZA, Cilvaringz, and Paddle8 also collaborated with MoMA PS1 to organize an intimate listening event and panel with Genius editor Sasha Frere-Jones, presenting the album within the context of a fine-art museum and featuring a never-before-heard, 13-minute medley of tracks from Once Upon A Time in Shaolin.... The event, which was attended by some of the most influential leaders of the art world, 36 fans, prospective buyers, and select members of the media, served as the first and only time that the public would hear excerpts from this album for 88 years, as stipulated by the terms of the sale. The response from music critics was overwhelmingly positive, with Rolling Stone writing: "simply put, if the full, 128-minute Once Upon A Time In Shaolin... is as solid as the 13 minutes heard on Mondaynight, it could be the group's most popular album since 1997."
Then someone won the bidding. Some places reported $5 million, others less, but all speculation was in the millions of dollars for this one-off album. Well, today, we all found out who bought it. [Sad horn sound]
Shkreli heard about Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and thought it would be nice to own, too. He attended a private listening session at the Standard Hotel hosted by Paddle8 co-founder Alexander Gilkes. Shkreli, who describes himself as a bit of a recluse, recalls Gilkes telling him that if he bought the record, he would have the opportunity to rub shoulders with celebrities and rappers who would want to hear it. “Then I really became convinced that I should be the buyer,” Shkreli says. (Paddle8 declined to comment, citing their policy of client confidentiality.) He also got to have lunch with RZA. “We didn’t have a ton in common,” Shkreli says. “I can’t say I got to know him that well, but I obviously like him.”
Having participated in bidding wars for companies and drugs, Shkreli says he had a feeling from the start that he’d made the highest offer for Shaolin. As it turned out, he was right. Shkreli won’t say how much he paid. But someone familiar with the deal says that the Wu-Tang Clan sold him the album for $2 million. Before he closed on the acquisition, Shkreli was permitted to listen to a few more snippets to make sure it was all there. Shkreli delegated the task to an employee.
[Bold is me laughing]
The public release of the identity of the world’s most expensive (and silliest) album sale has led the RZA, lead Wu-Tang Clan member, to announce what they are going to do with most of the money.
Wu-Tang Clan member RZA has now confirmed the rappers agreed to donate a portion of the sale to a good cause after the revelations about the buyer came to light.
“The sale of ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’ was agreed upon in May, well before Martin Skhreli’s business practices came to light,” RZA writes in an email to Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. “We decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.”
In classic fashion, Martin Shkreli had this to say:
“I was a little worried that they were going to walk out of the deal, but by then we’d closed,” he says. “The whole kind of thing since then has been just kind of ‘Well, do we want to announce it’s him? Do we not want to announce it’s him?’ I think they were trying to cover their butts a little bit.”
They indeed are “trying to cover their butts a little bit,” Mr. Shkreli—making a deal with you is like eating a bowl of leprosy.