You may remember the recent news that Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin sold at auction for millions of dollars. At the time, the American buyer’s identity was undisclosed, but now information has emerged that the buyer was in fact disgraced pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli.
Having become one of 2015’s biggest hate figures, owing to his unashamed plans to raise the proce of a cheap AIDS drug to $750, Bloomberg now reports that Shkreli agreed upon the purchase of the album in May of this year. The deal was agreed before the controversy with Wu-Tang’s RZA emailing a statement to Bloomberg saying: “The sale of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was agreed upon in May, well before Martin Shkreli’s business practices came to light. We decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.”
Shkreli, meanwhile, reacting to the Wu-Tang fans who may feel uneasy about him owning the one-off album, said: “At the end of the day, they didn’t buy the last album or the one before that, and all they had to pay was $10.” Nicely put as ever from the man who wanted to price those with AIDS out of paying for crucial drugs.
He is feeling somewhat charitable though it seems, saying that he wants more artists to make private albums for him giving them complete creative freedom over the process. “It’s almost like the instructions to the band are, ‘Do your best work, however much time it takes, and never compromise anything for me’,” Shkreli said. “I just want to hear what you’ve got.”
