Method Man is frustrated with the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin's album: "Pharma-Bro" and a lack of input raise questions about its Wu-Tang-ness.
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, rapper Method Man revealed some frustrations with his participation in Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, the fabled 2015 Wu-Tang Clan album. Shaolin is said to be the most expensive work of music ever sold, because only one single copy of the album actually exists; the digital files were all deleted, and all that's left is a a single copy of a two-CD set in a silver jewel-encrusted box with a wax seal of the Wu-Tang logo.
Unfortunately, the person who originally purchased the legendary record was also one Martin Shkreli, the notorious "Pharma-Bro" and convicted financial felon, who has since become embroiled in even more legal complications around the album after it was re-possessed and sold to a "digital art collective" called PleasrDAO.
But here's where the plot thickens: according to Method Man, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was created entirely by RZA and his business partner, with very little input from the rest of the Wu-Tang clan. As he explained to Variety:
It's an uncomfortable subject to most of the guys, so we don't really discuss it too much. The process of the thing being made was never told to us. We were never told what it was. It was never supposed to be a Wu-Tang album. We were recording and being paid to do a certain amount of records by a guy whose name I don't want to mention. He took all these verses—some of them were old verses—and put them altogether into a compilation of Wu-Tang songs and marketed it as a Wu-Tang album, and a single copy of a Wu-Tang album. We all had a problem with it because that's not how it was described to us.
This is not the first time Method Man has expressed his distaste for the record and the way the whole thing was handled. For example: he had no idea that the album would be released with a contractual stipulation preventing it from being released to the public for 88 years, and said as such when it was first announced in 2015:
Fuck that album. I'm tired of this shit and I know everybody else is tired of it, too. Fuck that album, if that's what they are doing. I haven't heard anything like that, but if they're doing crap like that, fuck that album. Straight up. I'm just keeping it 100. When music can't be music and y'all turning it into something else, fuck that. Give it to the people, if they want to hear the shit, let them have it. Give it away free. I don't give a fuck; that ain't making nobody rich or poor. Give the fucking music out. Stop playing with the public, man.
So hey, maybe you'll never get to hear that fabled seventh Wu-Tang record. But maybe that's not so bad, since even some of the people involved with it feel like it's a scam.
Method Man Talks Wu-Tang Clan, Working With ODB's Son, and the "Uncomfortable Subject" of Martin Shkreli's Auctioned Album [Lisa Robinson / Variety]
