The buyer will get to listen to the album now, but won’t have the right to release it publicly for another 88 years.
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Part of the mystery of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’s sale may have to do with the elaborate restrictions around its release.
Earlier this year, rap group The Wu-Tang Clan announced that it would be creating a one-off album, featuring 31 new tracks created over a nine year period. According to Paddle8, “the album marks a return to “Shaolin” not only geographically, but sonically and symbolically too”.
12 months later, and this week it has been revealed that someone has bought the album, called “Wu: Once Upon A Time In Shaolin”, for a undisclosed fee thought to be in the “millions” making it the most expensive album in human history.
RZA has stated that a “significant portion” of the proceeds from the record’s sale will be donated to charity. At whatever cost, the buyer reportedly received lyrics to all the songs in a leather-bound book, a hand-carved nickel album box, a gold leaf certificate of authenticity, and PMC MB2-XBD speakers, appraised at a $55,000 value alone.
All the music on the album was produced and recorded by RZA and Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh in Marrakech, Morocco. He’s been huge fan of the Wu for ages and shares an appreciation old martial arts films with RZA. According to Rolling Stone: “If the full, 128-minute Once Upon a Time in Shaolin…is as solid as the 13 minutes heard [at the playback], it could be the group’s most popular album since 1997”.
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The agreement states that the buyer will not be able to release any of the contents of the album for 88 years after the final deal is made.
