Today Bloomberg revealed that the bad boy monstrous asshole pharmaceutical executive and former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli was the mystery bidder who won out on the one existing copy of iconic rap group Wu-Tang Clan‘s latest album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Shkreli, whose pharmaceutical company purchased the drug called Daraprim in September and raised its price 5000% from $13.50 a pill to $750, paid $2 million for the album, but it’s unlikely that he’ll ever be known as the guy who bought a rare Wu CD – as opposed to one of the most greedy pricks ever to walk the Earth.
After learning that Bloomberg Businessweek was about to report that Shkreli had purchased the album, RZA, , the producer and de facto leader of Wu, e-mailed a statement: “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.”
To make matters worse, the smug Shkreli hasn’t listened to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin yet. He’s saving that for a time when he’s feeling low and needs something to lift his spirits. “I could be convinced to listen to it earlier if Taylor Swift wants to hear it or something like that,” he says. “But for now, I think I’m going to kind of save it for a rainy day.”
Naturally, there’s a legion of Wu-Tang fans out there who will be none-too-pleased about the owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, to which Shkreli offers an inarguably valid point: “At the end of the day they didn’t buy the last album or the one before that, and all they had to pay was $10.”
In justifying his pharmaceutical shittery, Shkreli explained his role in the Daraprim controversy: “What’s escaped the conversation is, hey, how about the fact that this is actually what I’ve been hired to do. It’s like someone criticizing a basketball player for scoring too many points.”
The only potential silver lining? A too-badass-for-Hollywood caper clause, in which any original member of the Wu or Bill Murray can make one attempt to steal the album back from the buyer. No, we’re not kidding:
The option is already tempting at least one member of the Clan:
We’re really getting the urge to call Bill Murray.
— RZA! (@RZA) December 11, 2015
The feature appears in the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, on newsstands Friday, December 11th.
