How Wu-Tang Clan created the rarest, most expensive album ever
When searching for the rarest vinyl in the world, it’s difficult to get much scarcer than a one-of-a-kind copy. A famous previous owner, band member’s signature or a sought-after sequence or catalogue number can elevate prices significantly, often requiring a prestigious auction house like Sotheby’s to take the reins from our trusty carthorse, eBay. In 2015, Wu-Tang Clan made a dramatic dent in the world of rare vinyl.
In 2014, the New York City hip-hop collective pressed just one physical copy of their seventh studio album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and encased it in a silver jewel-encrusted box with a wax Wu-Tang Clan seal and leather-bound liner notes. With no option to download or stream the album digitally, the album itself is the rarest and most mystical ever committed to plastic.
After pressing the record, the Clan stored it in a high-security vault at the Royal Mansour Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. Wu-Tang Clan auctioned the record via Paddle8 the following year with a legal agreement detailing that the purchaser could not commercially exploit the music until 2103.
The collective added another rather comical clause to the agreement. “The buying party also agrees that at any time during the stipulated 88-year period, the seller may legally plan and attempt to execute one (1) heist or caper to steal back Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, which, if successful, would return all ownership rights to the seller,” it stated. “Said heist or caper can only be undertaken by currently active members of the Wu-Tang Clan and/or actor Bill Murray, with no legal repercussions.”
The winning bidder at the auction was Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turning Pharmaceuticals, who paid a record-breaking $2million to get his hands on the prized album. In January 2016, he told Vice that he considered destroying the record to assert his power or install “it in some remote place so that people have to make a spiritual quest to listen.”
In the run-up to the US presidential election that year, Shkreli promised to share the music with fans if Donald Trump won. When the unthinkable manifested, he streamed snippets of the music online.
In September 2017, still preoccupied with his prized possession, Shkreli attempted to sell it on eBay. The winning bid surpassed $1million, but before the transaction was processed, Shkreli was arrested in an unrelated securities fraud case. Following the conviction in March 2018, the FBI impounded some of his valuable possessions, including Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.
After three years of storage in a federal court vault, the album was sold once more, this time by the US Department of Justice. The NFT collectors PleasrDAO reportedly paid $4million to cover Shkreli’s debts and obtain the sacred record. The company has since stated that it hopes to make the album more accessible to fans, but a few legal hurdles must be navigated first.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was recorded between 2007 and 2013 under the guidance of Wu-Tang Clan producer Cilvaringz, who had the idea of creating a valuable art product. The album intended to undermine the devaluing nature of music streaming and online piracy.
“The music industry is in crisis,” Wu-Tang Clan wrote on their website in 2015. “The intrinsic value of music has been reduced to zero. Contemporary art is worth millions by virtue of its exclusivity … By adopting a 400-year-old Renaissance-style approach to music, offering it as a commissioned commodity and allowing it to take a similar trajectory from creation to exhibition to sale … we hope to inspire and intensify urgent debates about the future of music.”
Although Once Upon a Time in Shaolin remains under wraps, some snippets can still be found online. Some of these can be heard in the video below.
