The Wu-Tang Clan recorded Once Upon a Time In Shaolin over a six-year period. In 2015, it was sold to former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli for two million. In 2021, it was sold to digital art collective PleasrDAO for four million. In that same year, RZA admitted that selling the album to Shkreli wasn’t a good idea, given the egregious crimes the latter committed at the time.
“It was in the wrong hands in reality. 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,” RZA said during an interview with Hot 97. “Now that PleasrDAO has it, there’s an 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.”
