Wu-Tang Clan’s secret album will finally get public play

The Future. Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is finally getting the opportunity to be listened to publicly… as long as you can make it to a museum in Australia. Considering the hype that the album has built up over the past decade, the exhibitions could spark a fan pilgrimage… and inspire other legendary acts to play with releasing albums in more analog ways.

Drop of the decade
The most valuable album in the world, per the Guinness Book of World Records, is finally getting a spin next month.

• Thirty minutes of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin will be played at listening sessions at Australia’s Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania between June 15th and June 24th.
• The LP is on loan from the decentralized autonomous organization PleasrDAO.
• Tickets are free (the album contractually can’t be used commercially until 2103) but are on a limited first-come, first-served basis.

Created in secret over the course of six years in the 2000s, only one pressing of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin exists in CD form (and it’s unavailable digitally or to stream). The CD was auctioned off in 2015, selling to pharmaceutical tycoon Martin Shkreli for $2 million. But when he was sent to prison for fraud, and his assets were taken by the federal government, the CD was purchased by PleasrDAO with crypto. Phew.

Why all the hoops to jump through to listen to this album? The group wrote that streaming had so greatly devalued music that they wanted to create a “Renaissance-style” work that “is worth millions by virtue of its exclusivity.”

Also, according to those who heard snippets of the album in 2015 at a single private exhibition in New York, the music apparently rules.