Once Upon A Time in Shaolin was recorded between 2006 and 2013 by Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA. Photo / Getty Images
With a single copy made and strict rules on sharing it, Wu-Tang Clan’s 2015 album is the ultimate limited edition. Is that about to change?
On the first song on their first album, Staten Island rap collective Wu-Tang Clan promise to “bring da ruckus”. They’ll bring a very different energy from June 15 when visitors to a museum in Tasmania will have a unique opportunity to experience the group’s LP Once Upon A Time in Shaolin – a record that exists as just a single copy that was initially acquired by a pharmaceutical entrepreneur (since jailed) for US$2 million (NZ$3.27m).
Wu-Tang Clan have never done things the easy way. They have a sprawling nine members (not counting late co-founder Russell Tyrone Jones, aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who overdosed on cocaine and prescription medication in 2004). Inspired by 1970s kung-fu movies as much as by the greats of hip-hop, their music blends blistering beats, bare-boned rapping and film samples. Collaborators have ranged from rapper Killah Priest to Texas frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri.
But nothing in their career has been quite as ambitious or insane as Once Upon A Time in Shaolin – often referred to as the most valuable album ever created, with a worth of US$4m (NZ$6.48m) and counting.
Once Upon A Time in Shaolin was recorded between 2006 and 2013 by Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA, aka 54-year-old Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, and Dutch-Moroccan producer Cilvaringz (real name Tarik Azzougarh). During that time, they would bring in other members of the Wu-Tang Clan to add individual verses without revealing the grand concept of creating a one-off LP. They persuaded members of the Barcelona football team to sing on the project along with Game of Thrones star Carice Van Houten and Cher, who contributed to two tracks.
The truly radical decision, however, was to make just a single copy – and then auction it to the highest bidder. RZA and Cilvaringz said they were inspired by the Renaissance, when artworks were created as “one-off” commissions and sold for eye-watering prices.
They rejected any suggestion that they were motivated by greed. Instead, they explained, were saying their piece about the commodification of music in the streaming era when the concept of a record as a tangible item has largely vanished (except for all those Taylor Swift fans buying multiple vinyl editions of her latest release). At a time when music flows like water from a tap, how subversive to make an album that the majority of the world will never have a chance to hear. They were doing a “reverse-Spotify” – their way of critiquing streaming culture and its impact on musicians.
There was also a bling factor, they admitted. “We’re about to put out a piece of art like nobody else has done in the history of [modern] music,” RZA told Forbes in 2013. “We’re making a single-sale collector’s item. This is like somebody having the sceptre of an Egyptian king.”
True to his promise, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin arrived with enough ornamentation to make Tutankhamun blush. The two CDs – which together contain 31 tracks – sit in an engraved nickel, silver and wood box hand-crafted by Moroccan artists and come with a seal carved by “wax-smiths in Serbia”.
The CDs were pressed in 2015, after which the digital master of the LP was deleted. And it is on CD where the music will remain for the time being: as part of the condition of sale, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin cannot be used for any “commercial purpose” for 88 years (a wink to the eight original members of the band), though the LP can be played at listening parties. Hence the plan to play a “curated, 30-minute sample” of the album at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) across 10 days in June (entry will be free, though those attending will have to apply for tickets).
“Every once in a while, an object on this planet possesses mystical properties that transcend its material circumstances,” Mona director of curatorial affairs Jarrod Rawlins said. “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is more than just an album so ... I knew I had to get it into this exhibition.”
Visitors to Mona won’t be the first to hear the LP. In March 2015, excerpts from the Once Upon A Time in Shaolin were played at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. “Typical of the group’s first record 36 Chambers, it features styles that shook the music scene in 1994 – soul samples, clips of dialogue from movies and fierce rapping over sound effects of rain and thunder,” wrote one journalist who heard it at the time. “Reiterating its own grandeur, there are regular skits and pieces of dialogue that say, ‘this has never been done before’.”
The album’s afterlife has been almost as convoluted as the terms under which it can be listened to. It was initially bought at auction for $2m by Martin Shkreli, the so-called “pharma-bro” who became infamous for jacking up the price of a drug used by cancer and Aids patients from $13.50 to $750 a pill.
He bought the album, he said, to flaunt his wealth. “There’s a lot of things rich guys do to show off. The press thing is a part of it, but it’s also to show your friends, or your last company, like, ‘Hey, f**k you, look at me, I got this $2m album.’ Guys do that all the time.”
At the time, Wu-Tang were philosophical about the deal. “He bought it, he can do what he wants,” said RZA. “The beautiful thing about art, from my standpoint, is that it has no discrimination.”
But he later had a change of heart. “It was in the wrong hands in reality,” RZA told a radio station in 2021. “He made the deal before it was revealed of his character, his personality, and all of the insidious things he would go on to do. That wasn’t the guy I met but he definitely unfolded into that guy.”
Shkreli tried selling the album on eBay, where the price topped $1.2m. He also promised to release snippets if Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election – a clear contravention of the purchase agreement. He was as good as his word, streaming extracts over the now-defunct social media site Periscope.
He didn’t have long to enjoy the LP, however, as he was convicted in 2018 of securities fraud. Once Upon A Time in Shaolin was seized by the US Department of Justice along with other assets, including an unreleased record by rapper Lil Wayne and an engraving by Picasso. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was then bought for $4m by PleasrDAO, a “digital art collective” specialising in digital NFTs, and has now been loaned to Mona.
“This beautiful piece of art, this ultimate protest against middlemen and rent-seekers of musicians and artists, went south by going into the hands of Martin Shkreli, the ultimate internet villain,” Jamis Johnson, PleasrDAO’s “chief pleasing officer” told Rolling Stone. “We want this to be us bringing this back to the people. We want fans to participate in this album at some level.”
Wu-Tang Clan fans are understandably keen to hear the album – and some diehards will be tempted to stump for the airfare to Tasmania. But will the trip be worth it? Could any one album possibly live up to the hype that has swirled around Once Upon A Time in Shaolin?
Perhaps that will be the true revelation for those who make it to Mona. That some things in life are more fun to fantasise about than to experience in reality and that a 31-track Wu-Tang Clan album might be one of them.
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