Last year we learned that Wu-Tang Clan planned to release a secret album called Once Upon a Time in Shaolin whose distribution would only be limited to one copy. Yes, that’s right: There’s a full album of never-heard Wu-Tang music out there and it’s just sold to an unknown buyer.
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According to Forbes, the album was recently sold on online auction house Paddle8 for an undisclosed sum of money in the range of millions of dollars. Paddle8 would not reveal the identity of the buyer and would only refer to them as an “American collector.” Nonetheless, the fact that the Wu got someone to drop millions of dollars for just one copy of its secret double album shows that this was a brilliant business decision.
The album itself comes in a silver-and-nickel box that Forbes reported last year “was handcrafted over the course of three months by British-Moroccan artist Yahya, whose works have been commissioned by royal families and business leaders around the world.” The person who bought the album, which even features a guest appearance by Cher, will now decide for themselves whether to leak it to the public or keep it for themselves. All told, this record seems destined to go down along with the Beach Boys’ Smile and Guns’N’Roses’ Chinese Democracy as one of pop music’s great lost albums.
