Weekly updates:

Music
Posted by

Arguably one of the most despised people on the internet, pharmaceutical company CEO Martin Shkreli, has given us even more reason to dislike him, after coming out to confirm that he was the highest bidder (and now owner) of the sole copy of Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, Wu-Tang’s latest album. Just in case you forgot, or haven’t heard, Shkreli is the ‘Pharma bro’ who heads the company that acquired the AIDS treatment drug and subsequently raised its price from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Apparently the sale had been finalised back in May, with no intention of actually releasing the buyer’s details, but with recent reports of the winning bid being in “the millions”, naturally the world’s curiosity was piqued. According to Bloomberg, the outspoken Shkreli didn’t want to remain anonymous (surprise!), and actually sat down with the dude to get his take on the whole situation. Evidently, even he was a little worried that RZA and co would back out of the deal once they found out he was the highest bidder “but by then we’d closed.”

In a statement to the financial mag, RZA said “The sale of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was agreed upon in May, well before Martin Skhreli’s [sic] business practices came to light. We decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity.”

The feature also reveals that the 32-year-old recently had Fetty Wap come and perform for him, and would like more rappers to make him one-off albums because “you know, at the right price these guys basically will do anything.” For now, it doesn’t look like the general public will be getting any soundbytes from Shaolin—he’s sitting on the album until he really needs a pick-me-up… or unless Taylor Swift comes around and wants to listen to it.

Check out the full Bloomberg feature here.

Weekly updates