Martin Shkreli, former Most Hated Man In America, is also the proud owner of an unreleased Wu-Tang Clan album. He bought the record using money he made from jacking up the cost of HIV medication, and has never released the album. That is, until President Trump was elected.
Long ago, Shkreli promised to release Once Upon a Time In Shaolin if Trump won the Presidency. Well, the Republicans carried through on their part of the deal, and very late last night, so did Shkreli. He streamed the intro and one track to his avid listeners on a livestream, but as you’d expect from the internet, the tracks are now everywhere.
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The quality isn’t fantastic, as it’s an audio rip off a YouTube video of Shkreli playing the album over his computer speakers, but it’s more than enough to give you a good idea of what to expect from the album.
The first video is the intro to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. The two-minute intro is an eclectic mix of church bells, monologue, and samplings from old movies — exactly what you’d expect, in other words. It transitions neatly into the first track.
Under the terms of the agreement which saw Shkreli buy Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2 million in December last year, Shkreli is actually forbidden from releasing it to the public for the next 88 years. Although a bad livestream like this seems to be allowable, I wouldn’t expect Shkreli to put the entire album up on SoundCloud any time soon.
