Hey, do you have all of the Wu-Tang Clan’s albums? Are you sure? I know you probably have Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s stuff, “The Purple Tape” and most of Method Man’s music, but how about Cappadonna? Masta Killa, too? U-God? Even Masta Pop the Cza’s mixtape? See, that was a trick question. There is no Masta Pop the Cza, and I’m pretty sure the name U-God is made up, too. Let me check.
Yep, there actually is someone named U-God in Wu-Tang. Well, if you’re looking for one of the Staten Island, N.Y., group’s CDs, I have the plug on where you can get one of the rare Wu albums for only seven figures. My boy Martin Shkreli is trying to sell one for the low, low price of $1 million. Are you interested?
You remember Martin Shkreli. He is the multimillionaire hedge fund manager known for his evil, parasitic greed. He’s the guy who founded a biotech company that bought the rights to pharmaceuticals. Shkreli’s business plan was basically to buy the rights to medicines that treated rare diseases, hike up the price and make millions.
In 2014 he bought the rights to a treatment for a rare kidney stone condition. He raised the price of the pills from $1.50 a pop to $30 apiece, even though the people with the disease had to take 10-30 pills per day. In 2016 Shkreli bought the rights for Daraprim. Daraprim treats toxoplasmosis (which is a disease caused by cat urine that makes rats horny and ... you know what? Before I start nerding out on you, let me get back to the story). In patients with HIV, toxoplasmosis can be fatal. (Seriously, you should read about toxoplasmosis; it is fascinating!) So Shkreli decided to raise the price of the drug by 5,500 percent!
If Lex Luthor had a baby with Satan and, while the baby was in the womb, injected it with the blood of Donald Trump; then, when the baby was born, let Tomi Lahren baby-sit it, that kid would be evil as fuck ... but it still wouldn’t be as evil as Martin Shkreli.
When Shkreli was making millions by capitalizing on tragic illness, he balled out of control. One of the things he did was buy the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Before you go looking through your Wu-Tang CD collection to see if you have that album—don’t bother. You don’t.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was made by the Wu in 2015. They wrote it, recorded it and mastered it, and then decided that they would make only one copy. Then they sold the copy to the highest bidder, who just happened to be Martin Shkreli. Imena, what was he going to do with all that blood money?
Apparently, Shkreli has fallen on hard times recently. It might be because he was convicted of securities fraud in federal court. Or perhaps it was because he had to use his last little bit of money to get bailed out of jail. Anyway, his net worth dropped from $45 million to about $11.39, give or take a few dollars.
So now he is trying to sell the one-of-a-kind album on eBay. Yes, that eBay.
“I decided to purchase this album as a gift to the Wu-Tang Clan for their tremendous musical output,” Shkreli said in the eBay post. “Instead I received scorn from at least one of their (least-intelligent) members, and the world at large failed to see my purpose of putting a serious value behind music.”
He went on to say the most passive-aggressive thing ever written on eBay:
At any time I may cancel this sale and I may even break this album in frustration. I will donate half of the sale proceeds to medical research. I am not selling to raise cash—my companies and I have record amounts of cash on hand. I hope someone with a bigger heart for music can be found for this one-of-a-kind piece and makes it available for the world to hear.
What the hell? At the time of this writing, the highest bid for the album is $1 million, but there are still eight days left in the auction. The great thing about this is that if you buy this CD from Shkreli, not only would you be helping someone who will probably use the money to drive his Porsche over boxes of kittens or invest it in uranium to sell to Kim Jong Un, but the eBay listing has free shipping! I guess Wu-Tang Clan really ain’t nothing to fuck with.
Now, you could probably get the entire Wu-Tang Clan to come to your house for about $184, but if you have a few million dollars that you’d spend on a Wu-Tang CD, you can buy it here.
I was going to do it, but the way my PayPal is set up ...