It came out a while ago that the dickhead – Martin Shkreli – who raised the costs of life-saving drugs and had allegations of fraud against him also bought the latest, one-and-only Wu-Tang Clan album The Wu: Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Personally, I was a little peeved because he proceeded to hang it in his office and never let anyone ever listen to it. I mean, he did buy it for $2 million (and in the picture he shared of him holding it he was wearing Touche Amore T-shirt) but now he’s not amped to share it. In fact, he had this to say:

[Music] actually used to be for the privileged elite. When Mozart and stuff wrote, music was for the very few.

Apparently Martin has it nicely displayed in his Midtown Manhattan office in its elaborate gold box that served as the packaging.

But how did he even come to get his dirty hands on the peice of legend?

The sale of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was agreed upon in May, well before Martin Skhreli’s [sic] business practices came to light. We decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.

Since then, the Wu leader Ghostface Killah has implored Shkreli to release the album or at least send it around on a museum tour, while Ghostface Killah straight-up called him a “shithead,” which led to Shkreli making a bizarre video where he rants about Ghostface:

According to Shkreli, who grew up the son of immigrants in Sheepshead Bay, he pitched himself to RZA as being an authentic New Yorker when they were discussing the sale.

I said, look man, I’m from Brooklyn. That’s 80 percent of what you need to know about me. He was like, ‘That’s a very good start.’

But from Martin’s side, this is what he said:

I said, ‘I’m from New York City, I’m a poor kid, I did my best to grow up in New York and do well. And I told him, ‘I’m not your biggest fan. I’m not even close. There are people who are much bigger Wu-Tang fans than me. But I still wanna buy this album.'”

And when RZA asked him to name what Wu-Tang songs he liked?

I said I liked the songs that reminded me of punk rock.

Hence the Touche Amore and Brand New t-shirts.

Only Forbes and about 150 people have heard snippets of the album, but other than that no one but the Wu and Shkreli know what’s on it. Although, when Allie Conti interviewed Shkreli she heard bits and bobs of it. Shkreli explained more:

The track and the track numbers and all the track titles are not known to the public. I have the manuscripts that reveal them.”

She was able to jot down a couple of the track names, which were Dirty Bomb and Stone Him! Swine [Interlude.]

Shkreli was at one point thinking of destroying it for the sake of historical record so Allie took some pics – for the sake of historical record:

 

[source: vice]