The Infamous Never-Before-Heard Wu Tang Album That Martin Shkreli Once Owned Will Be Played Publicly For The First Time Next Month

Madison McGaw. Shutterstock Images.

Pitchfork - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the Wu-Tang Clan album whose sole copy was purchased by Martin Shkreli in 2015 and later resold at auction, will receive its first public playbacks at listening events next month. The series takes place at Australia’s Museum of Old and New Art as part of its Namedropping exhibition. In addition to listening events for a 30-minute excerpt of the album, the physical record, housed in a silver box, will be on display.

A contract stipulates that the album—now owned by digital art collective Pleasr—cannot be commercially exploited until 2109, but it can be played at private listening events such as MONA’s. The exhibition runs from June 15-24.

This god damn album, man. I want to hear it and I don't ever think about Wu-Tang. Like, my Venn Diagram of music I care about/listen to has very little overlap with Wu-Tang. But like most things, us humans crave what we can't have. Ever since Eve bit that god damn apple, the human mind has been trained to crave what we can't have. Whether it's a potential relationship (or getting back with an ex), something overly-expensive that we cannot afford, or this fucking album that nobody besides Martin Shkreli and a few other people have heard, we want what we can't have.

Now, don't forget Shkreli no longer owns the album. The US Government seized it from him during his whole "ripping off people with cancer" trial, and then flipped it to a "digital art collective" for $4 mil. Since the contract for owning it says you can't make money off it it/put it on Spotify til 2109, a year where human kid certainly will no longer exist, they are streaming it legally at an art museum. 

Honestly- how will we even know if it's good or not? On one hand there's no way it can meet the type of being the $4 million CD. On the other hand if you're one of the only people to ever hear it, you gotta hype it up like it's the greatest thing ever to make everyone else jealous. I don't care if it's just someone farting for an hour, you gotta act elite to all the normies who will never hear it.

Finally, every so often this tweet of mine starts gathering steam again. No idea why but always makes me chuckle when I see it making the rounds again.