Method Man says “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was 'never supposed to be a Wu-Tang album'

Only one copy was made of the 2015 album, which was infamously sold to Martin Shkreli for $2 million.

It was a dark day in hip-hop — and really, humanity — when hated "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli bought what was billed at the time as the only copy of Wu-Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2 million.

But according to founding member and all-around zaddy Method Man, Shaolin wasn't even supposed to be a Wu-Tang album in the first place.

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" I thought it was some circus spectacle," Method Man (né Clifford Smith Jr.) told Vanity Fair when asked about Shaolin. "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 too much. The process of the thing being made was never told to us. We were never told what it was. It was never supposed to be a Wu-Tang album."

Mr. Mef continued, "We were recording and being paid to do a certain amount of records by a guy whose name I don’t want to mention. He took all these verses — some of them were old verses — and put them altogether into a compilation of Wu-Tang songs and marketed it as a Wu-Tang album, and 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."

Related: Music from Alicia Keys, Ricky Martin, Wu-Tang Clan, and more added to the National Recording Registry

Shkreli ultimately lost custody of the album (though he made digital copies) when he was convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to prison in 2018, and in July 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice sold Shaolin to the non-fungible token collectors PleasrDAO for $4 million to cover Shkreli's debts.

Last month, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania, put Once Upon a Time in Shaolin on exhibition to the public for the first time, and in a flex that prompted almost immediate legal action from PleasrDAO, Shkreli live-streamed the album on X, formerly Twitter.

As for the Wu, the brand remains strong with the final season of their Hulu series Wu-Tang: An American Saga premiering last year.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.