There was only one wrinkle: The buyer didn’t care about his privacy he wanted to go public. “This was very much a mutual decision,” RZA insisted in an e-mail. 24, Paddle8 announced that the Wu-Tang Clan had sold the album for a record figure “in the millions.” The price had been agreed to in May, but according to the press release, the parties “spent months finalizing contracts and devising legal protections for a distinctive work whose value depends on its singularity.” But the group wouldn’t reveal the buyer’s name. “It’s most likely not going to be someone who appreciates the music.” The drive to keep the music out of the hands of the millionaires was spirited but ultimately too small. “Someone who has disposable millions, it’s just another shiny new toy for them,” says Russell Meyer, one of the organizers. Two of the group’s disgruntled admirers started a Kickstarter campaign to buy Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and keep it out of plutocratic hands. Some Wu-Tang fans objected to the group’s plan. Fans speculated that the buyer might turn out to be the director Quentin Tarantino, a Hollywood associate of RZA, or venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, who has written about his love of rap. It was stored in a vault in the Royal Mansour Marrakech hotel in Morocco and any duplicates had been destroyed.Įven before the bidding began, the Wu-Tang Clan claimed, they had received a $5 million offer. Aside from RZA and his co-producer, Tarik “Cilvaringz” Azzougarh, nobody had heard the entire record. All the surviving members of the Wu-Tang Clan contributed to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, along with some special guests. The music itself was expected to be spectacular. The 31-track album would come in a hand-carved box, accompanied by a leather-bound book with 174 pages of parchment paper filled with lyrics and background on the songs. The Wu-Tang Clan hired Paddle8, an online auction startup, to sell the album.
In an era where people are happy to stream music rather than actually possess it, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin offered a chance to own something truly unique. If the owner desired, he could be the only one who ever heard it.
#Wu tang forever full album for free
That meant the owner could listen to the record in a soundproof room, drive a pickup truck over it, or release it for free on the Internet. Initially, the Clan wanted to forbid the buyer from publicly releasing the album for 88 years, but over time decided to grant the buyer total freedom as long as the album wasn’t sold commercially. This is like someone having the scepter of an Egyptian king.” “We’re making a single-sale collector’s item. “We’re about to put out a piece of art like nobody else has done in the history of music,” RZA told Forbes. In March 2014, Robert Diggs, better known as RZA, the producer and de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan, the iconic rap group, announced that the Clan would create only one copy of its next album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and sell it to the highest bidder. It was one of the greatest sales pitches the music industry has ever heard.
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