The life of Wu-Tang Clan's one of a kind album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, has had its share of ups and down. The LP was famously purchased in 2015 by "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli for $2 million, making it the most expensive piece of music ever sold at the time. Shkreli, whose claim to fame was price-gouging a life-saving AIDS and cancer drug, then got in a feud with the artists, and threatened to delete Ghostface Killah's parts before attempting to sell the album on eBay.
Shkreli ended up being convicted of securities fraud, which then led to the album getting repossessed by the government as a part of his civil asset forfeiture. The album was then auctioned off by the feds for $4 million in what was described as "a complex deal with multiple parties, one of whom remains unidentified."
Now, according to the New York Times, the album was acquired by the NFT collective PleasrDAO. The group, which describes itself as "an art collecting empire... experimenting with novel concepts in digital and community art ownership," is reportedly being kept in a vault in an undisclosed location in New York City. The collective hopes to make the album available to the public — with the blessing of RZA and producer Cilvaringz, of course.
Hopefully they can come to some sort of agreement so we don't have to wait 80 or so years to hear it.
Photo via Getty/ Bob Berg
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