Credit: Wutangcashew

A 2007 Wu-Tang Clan album is currently in the middle of a lawsuit. Entitled Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, the project has never been heard before, and there is only one copy on the planet.

In 2007, all living members of the Wu-Tang Clan reunited to record an album. The collective worked on the LP for six years. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was pressed onto a single disc, put in an ornate Oriental-inspired box, and immediately stored in a vault at the Royal Mansour Hotel in Marrakech. It was then auctioned for $2,000,000 to Martin Shkreli in 2015.

However, in 2021, Shkreli was arrested on fraud charges and had his assets seized, including the Once Upon a Time in Shaolin CD. The album was then put up for sale again but priced at $4 million. It was eventually sold to the NFT company PleasrDAO.

However, PleasrDAO has sued the disgraced “Pharma Bro” Shkreli as it has emerged that while it was in his possession, the fraudster pirated the album and distributed it widely, thereby reducing its value.

PleasrDAO paid $4.75million for the rare album in two instalments, once in July 2021 and second in January this year. In the lawsuit, 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 Space to a group of nearly 5,000 people.

During a 2016 YouTube livestream following his early release from prison, Shkreli boasted, “I was playing it on YouTube the other night even though somebody paid $4 million for it.”

PleasrDAO has argued in the lawsuit that by sharing the album’s files, Shkreli “greatly diminished and/or destroyed the Album’s value.” They are looking for Shkreli to destroy his copies, turn over any profits he made from playing the music online, and pay compensatory and punitive damages.