Wu-Tang Clan’s enigmatic Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album, which was recently purchased for upwards of $4 million is now being sold as a $1 NFT, sort of.
On Thursday (June 13), digital art collective PleasrDAO, who purchased the 1-of-1 album in 2021, announced they would be offering the album to the public via non-fungible tokens.
The rare LP has been digitized and encrypted and is available on www.thealbum.com for $1. However, there is a catch. Only a five-minute teaser of the album is currently available.
“Each sale will bring the album’s release closer from the original date of October 8th 2103 and will immediately unlock exclusive access to an album sampler created by the album’s co-producer, Cilvaringz,” a press release about the sale reads. “Additional music from the album will become available as Pleasr works with the original artists to deliver it to the owners of the encrypted album over the coming weeks.
“With this new innovation in the album’s decade–long journey, Pleasr is working to accelerate the original release date through collective participation and posing a simple question: are we willing to pay artists for new works in the digital age?”
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin has been shrouded in mystery since it was announced for sale in 2015. The sale had a bunch of stipulations including that copies were never to be made and it was not to be sold for 88 years. It became the most expensive work of music ever sold when it was purchased by pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli that December for $2 million. The purchase seemed to be more of a rich flex than Shkreli who at one point considered destroying the album.
Shkreli’s possession of the album and behavior after he got it rubbed a few Wu members the wrong way. Beef erupted between Ghostface and Shkreli and included both of them taking shots at each other in videos shared on social media. RZA later said he regretted selling the album to Shkreli.
Two years after the purchase of the rare Wu-Tang album, Shkreli was convicted of committing securities fraud and sentenced to seven years in prison, but not before he played parts of the album on a livestream that year. In 2021, the U.S. government confiscated the album and later sold it to satisfy Shkreli’s debts. Earlier this week, PleasrDAO sued Shkreli for copying and streaming the album without permission. The album has only been officially played at private listening events, even then not in full.
