Show of hands, how many people are over Martin Shkreli. The pharma bro has made himself public enemy #1 since jacking up prices on a much-needed AIDS vaccine. He solidified himself as a comic book type villain when he later went to war with Wu-Tang Clan founder The RZA and Ghostface Killah over his purchase of the Once Upon A Time in Shaolin album.
With legal bills piling up and possible jail time ahead of him, Shkreli decided to put the album up for auction on eBay.
Per XXL
Martin Shkreli will be sadly linked to hip-hop and the Wu-Tang Clan forever, but at least for now, it looks like the chapter has come to an end. The infamous Pharma Bro, who initially bought the Clan’s one of a kind album, One Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2 million has now sold the rarity on eBay for just over $1 million.
The album quietly went up on the auction block a couple weeks ago. “This is the one and only Wu-Tang album,” Shkreli wrote in the description. “I decided to purchase this album as a gift to the Wu-Tang Clan for their tremendous musical output. Instead I received scorn from at least one of their (least-intelligent) members, and the world at large failed to see my purpose of putting a serious value behind music. I will be curious to see if the world values music nearly as much as I have. I have donated to many rock bands and rappers over the years to ensure they can continue to produce their art when few others would.”
According to Shkreli, the CD is still “like new.” After 343 bids, the LP sold for $1,025,100.
Shkreli has been a hip-hop pariah since his purchase of the LP and the verbal back and forth with Ghostface Killah that followed. He even once said he considered destroying the Wu album.
He kept his 15 minutes of fame ticking by also getting his hands on Lil Wayne’s The Carter V album.
New reports coming out about the rare Wu album have people now questioning whether it can be counted as an official Wu-Tang Clan LP. True, all members contributed verses, but it doesn’t appear to be official in the eyes of some clansmen who didn’t know what the material would end up on.
“It’s not an authorized Wu-Tang Clan album. It never was,” U-God’s manager Domingo Neris told recently told Bloomberg. “We would never have authorized anyone to put together a project and call it a Wu-Tang Clan record without us ever looking at it, hearing it, or being in the same room together.”
Cilvaringz, who put the project together with RZA, called the process, “too complex to explain in a soundbite,” but said all members were paid up front.
Method Man’s manager, James Ellis, didn’t sound so sure about the validity either. “When we did the verses, it was for a Cilvaringz album. How it became a Wu-Tang album from there? We have no knowledge of that,” he said.
The $1 million Shkreli will be getting from the Wu album sale will surely help with his mounting legal bills. He was recently convicted of charges of securities fraud.