Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the Wu-Tang Clan album that exists in a single physical copy that was once bought by disgraced pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martin Shkreli for US$2m, will finally be available to hear – if you can get to Tasmania.
The Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart has acquired the album on loan from the digital art collective Pleasr for its upcoming exhibition Namedropping, which will explore status, celebrity and notoriety.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, sometimes referred to as the most valuable album ever made, was recorded in secret between 2006 and 2013 and is housed in an ornate silver box. It reportedly features contributions from all surviving members of Wu-Tang Clan – and two appearances from Cher.
The album’s rarity was intended as a statement about the impact of streaming and piracy on the value of music, with Wu-Tang producers Cilvaringz and RZA describing it as “a 400-year-old Renaissance-style approach to music”, saying they hoped by “offering it as a commissioned commodity … to inspire and intensify urgent debates about the future of music”.
A single two-CD copy was pressed in 2015, and the digital master files deleted. A legal agreement at the time stipulated that the album could not be used for any commercial purpose for 88 years, or until 2103. RZA said the number of years was chosen because there were eight original Wu-Tang Clan members, because the numbers of the year 2015 added up to eight, and a rotated eight is the symbol for infinity. His fellow member Method Man later described the 88-year stipulation as “stupid”.
Under the agreement, the album can be played at listening parties. A 13-minute medley of the album was played to about 150 art experts, rap fans and prospective buyers at a single event held in New York’s MoMa in 2015, with Rolling Stone writing: “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.”
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was later bought at auction by Shkreli, who became notorious when he hiked the price of a drug used by cancer and Aids patients by 50-fold overnight. Shkreli promised to release the album if Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election; when he did, Shkreli streamed excerpts online.
Shkreli later tried to sell the album on eBay, where the price reached $1.2m but the sale was never completed.
“I didn’t like the idea of him putting it on eBay,” RZA told the Guardian in 2017. “I think he could have got more than what he paid.”
In 2018, after Shkreli’s conviction for securities fraud, he was forced to hand over the album as part of $7.4m in assets that were seized by a federal court, which also included a Picasso painting and the unreleased Lil Wayne album Tha Carter V.
In 2021 the US Department of Justice sold it to Pleasr for $4m to cover Shkreli’s debts, with the collective stating at the time that it would find a way to make it accessible to the world.
Its appearance at Mona will be the first time that the album has been loaned to a museum since the original sale.
Mona will hold free, ticketed listening sessions from 15 to 24 June where members of the public can hear a “curated” 30-minute mix of the album, played from a personalised Wu-Tang PlayStation 1 inside Mona’s recording studio, Frying Pan.
“Every once in a while, an object on this planet possesses mystical properties that transcend its material circumstances,” said Jarrod Rawlins, Mona’s director of curatorial affairs. “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is more than just an album, so when I was thinking about status, and what a transcendent namedrop could be, I knew I had to get it into this exhibition.”
Pleasr said it was “honoured to partner with Mona to support RZA’s vision for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin”.
“Ten years ago, the Wu-Tang Clan had a bold vision to make a single copy album as a work of fine art. To ‘put it in an art gallery … make music become a living piece like a Mona Lisa or a sceptre from Egypt’,” Pleasr said. “With this single work of art, the Wu-Tang Clan’s intention was to redefine the meaning of music ownership and value in a world of digital streaming and commodification of music.”
Also in the exhibition are David Bowie’s original handwritten lyrics for Starman, complete with spelling corrections, which were bought at auction by Mona’s owner, David Walsh, in 2022.
Namedropping will run at Mona from 15 June 2024 until 21 April 2025. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin will be on display from 15 to 24 June, with tickets for the listening parties available via the Mona website
