Big Pharma Bro is back in the news as the highest bidder on Wu-Tang Clan’s latest album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”.
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Shkreli, who became public enemy number one last fall when it was revealed he had jacked the price of an antiparasitic drug from $13.50 to $750, was revealed as the buyer of the super-rare LP by Bloomberg Businessweek on Wednesday. After the “business practices came to light”, RZA told Bloomburg, the group donated some of his payment to charity.
For his own part, Shkreli told Bloomberg he has not yet heard the album, with the maiden listening session deferred “for a rainy day”.
But everybody from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump criticized Shkreli, and the BBC declared that the mogul “may be the most hated man in America”. Now he’s the proud owner of the sole copy of a priceless Wu-Tang album, because nothing in this world is fair.
Hmm, Shkreli kind of had that situation going with the emo label he was funding before the artist running it returned his money and chose to go broke rather than stay in business and be associated with Martin Shkreli.
Under the terms of the deal, Shkreli can’t “commercialize” it for 88 years, according to Paddle8, the online auction house that Wu Tang Clan hired to handle the transaction.
Fans on Twitter called on RZA to release the album. The group spent years recording the album in secret, and it features at least one guest-vocal from Cher.
Shkreli also boasted of his ability to get any rapper he wanted to perform for him.
So who bought the album? Before they closed the deal, Wu-Tang offered to let Shkreli listen to the album to make sure all the tracks were there, and he sent an employee to do it. Now, Shkreli’s waiting to see if any celebrities want to listen to it with him. “The whole kind of thing since then has been just kind of ‘Well, do we want to announce it’s him?” He previously purchased a Visa card once belonging to Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and once joked about buying a guitar of Katy Perry’s in order to get a date with the singer.
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Martin Shkreli, the Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO who was backing Geoff Rickly’s label until they severed ties in the wake of the news surrounding Shkreli’s greedy price-gouging, has found his way into the music news once again.
