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The exact cost of Wu-Tang Clan's secret album has finally been revealed four years after it was sold to its current owner.
According to a report Bloomberg published on Friday, July 18, the U.S. government sold the New York rap group's seventh studio LP, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, for $2,238,482.30 to digital art and crypto brand PleasrDAO. It was sold to satisfy the remaining balance that its previous owner, Martin Shkreli, owed the government after he was convicted of securities fraud in 2017. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, ordered to pay a $75,000 fine, and required to forfeit $7.4 million in assets.
For the unfamiliar, each member of the Wu-Tang Clan secretly recorded the album in Staten Island for six years with producer Cilvaringz, who produced the project in Morocco. One copy of the album was created in 2014, but the original files associated with the album's creation were deleted. It's the only version of the LP in the world, which makes it a true one-of-a-kind work of art. Shkreli bought the album at an auction for $2 million.
Following the "Pharma Bro's" incarceration, the government seized all of Shkreli's assets, including the album. In 2021, the Department of Justice sold PleasrDAO the album for “the equivalent of $4 million in a cryptocurrency tied to the dollar." As per the terms of their legal agreement, the current owner can only play the album during listening sessions.
Last year, PleasrDAO hosted rare listening sessions of the album featuring a brief sampler of the album created by Cilvaringz. The brand also gave people a chance to own a digitized and encrypted edition of the album. All fans have to do is log on to the official website, sign up and pay $1. Once purchased, owners will unlock the exclusive sampler and bring the album closer to its legally bound release date of October 8, 2103.