Earlier this week, Pleasr announced plans to bring Wu-Tang Clan’s highly coveted and controversial album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to the public. According to a statement posted on X, they have been “secretly working with the original artists and producer” to legally release the album.
Pleasr’s announcement emphasized “This will not be a normal album sale.” That statement couldn’t be more accurate.
The world’s most expensive album is now available for “purchase” for just $1, albeit with a twist — you may not get to hear it in your lifetime, unless everyone bands together.
A legal agreement stipulates that the album cannot be commercially exploited until 2103, although it can be played at listening parties. This means that the album will remain commercially unavailable for the next 79 years. Unless enough people invest.
Let us explain: the album is encrypted, and each purchase moves the decryption date forward by 88 seconds. This means that the more people who buy the album, the faster it will be decrypted.
We’ll save you the math, the price tag is just over $28 million, however 1.4 million Wu heads worldwide spending $20 each could get the album decrypted and released in a day.
For those dying with anticipation, your purchase unlocks an exclusive sampler of the album, which sounds incredible. From a reprise of the Raekwon classic “Rainy Dayz” to a Redman feature, there’s a lot to love.
It seems that after almost a decade, the fate of the album rests in the hands of the fans themselves.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was recorded in secret over a period of six years. In 2014, a single two-CD copy was pressed and stored in a secured vault at the Royal Mansour Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. The album was then auctioned through Paddle8 in 2015, with Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, emerging as the winning bidder with a reported $2 million offer.
Following Shkreli’s conviction for securities fraud in 2018, a federal court seized his assets, including the album. In July 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice sold it to non-fungible token collectors PleasrDAO for $4 million to cover Shkreli’s debts.
