Method Man reveals his issue with Wu-Tang Clan album
Wu-Tang Clan’s album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, is a rare and important piece of hip-hop history. The album took six years to record and complete and has features from every living member of the Wu-Tang Clan. That’s not what sets the record apart, though. Instead, the album is so unique because only one copy exists, and it was sold at auction for an eye-watering $2 million in 2015. The LP can also not be played publicly or distributed at large until 2103.
While the album was an interesting concept, the story of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin has been filled with legal plot holes and issues brought up by the man who bought it. The record, which was intended to be a seminal release from the rap outfit, is now considered a polarising one.
Method Man recently discussed this shifting narrative in an interview with Vanity Fair. Proving to be a topic of contention for the group, the rapper confirmed they don’t discuss it too much within their camp. “I thought it was some circus spectacle,” he said, “I never really spoke to RZA about it. It’s an uncomfortable subject to most of the guys, so we don’t really discuss it much.”
One of the main reasons there is such disdain surrounding the album is that the group, aside from RZA, was unaware of the rollout plan when they were making it. As far as they were all concerned, they were making a regular Wu-Tang album that would be released in the same way that previous albums had been.
“The process of the thing being made was never told to us,” explained Method Man, “We were never told what it was. We were recording and being paid to do a certain amount of records.”
It’s hard for Method Man to look positively at Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, given the disconnect between the rollout plan and the recording process. “[Cilvaringz] put them altogether into a compilation of Wu-Tang songs and marketed it as a Wu-Tang album,” stated the rapper, “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 isn’t the first time Method Man has spoken out about his resentment towards the album. In an interview with in June, he called the 88-year commercial ban “stupid,” saying, “Fuck that album… When music can’t be music and y’all turning it into something else, fuck that. Give it to the people.”