The one-of-one Wu-Tang Clan album sold to disgraced Wall Street executive Martin Shkreli is at the center of a new lawsuit against him.
According to a complaint viewed by HipHopDX, the “Pharma Bro” has been sued in New York by digital art collective PleasrDAO.
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The collective said it paid $4.75 million for the rare album, only to learn Shkreli made copies of it and is distributing the material widely.
The album, titled Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, was sold to Shkreli for $2 million in 2015. In 2018, the government took the album to partially satisfy a $7.4 million forfeiture order after his convictions for securities fraud and conspiracy.
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Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in the matter, but was released early in 2022.
After the album was taken out of Shkreli’s hands, PleasurDAO bought it in two payments, one in July 2021 and a second in January 2024.
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In the suit, PleasrDAO alleges Shkreli has made copies of the album’s songs, and has shared them with thousands of people, including by playing the project in a Twitter Spaces session with nearly 5,000 attendees.
“I was playing it on YouTube the other night even though somebody paid $4 million for it,” he was quoted as saying, allegedly during a 2022 YouTube livestream.
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Sharing the album’s files, PleasrDAO argues in their complaint, “greatly diminishes and/or destroys the Album’s value,” since it was conceived as a project with only one existing copy.
Per the lawsuit, “Shrkeli’s actions violated the Court’s Forfeiture Order…and further constitute misappropriation of trade secrets… Shkreli will commit further violations by continuing to disseminate the Album’s data and files.”
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PleasrDAO wants Shkreli to destroy his copies, turn over any profits he made from playing the music online, and pay compensatory and punitive damages.
During a 2021 interview with Hot 97’s Ebro Darden, Peter Rosenberg and Laura Stylez, RZA expressed how much regret he felt when he realized the album ended up with someone like Shkreli.
“It was in the wrong hands,” RZA said matter-of-factly. “He made the deal before it was revealed of his character, of his personality, and all of the insidious things he would go on to do.”
Speaking on PleasrDAO’s aquistion of the project, he expressed his optimism their intentions are pure and will fall in line with some of the visions he had for the project, including museum installations and album listening experiences.
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“[Those things] were not going to be able to happen with Mr. Shkreli,” he continued. “Now that PleasrDAO has it, there’s opportunity that a lot these beautiful ideas of what this art can be and how it could expand itself in the world and in its own life of itself. I think the possibilities are there now.”
True to RZA’s sentiments, PleasrDAO have now loaned the album to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania for an exhibition titled Namedropping. Its residency at the MONA this summer will mark the first time the album has ever been handed over to a museum for the public’s consumption.
