Fans can now have the opportunity to hear the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album... with a condition.
Some lucky people in the public will have the chance to listen to this amazing hip-hop piece - if they manage to make it to a museum on the Australian island of Tasmania next month. From June 15 to 24, the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) will be displaying a unique piece of history: an album that's more than just music.
This one-of-a-kind exhibit will only last for a little over a week, with a limited number of tickets available for free listening sessions. The album is part of Mona's "Namedropping" exhibition, which explores objects that possess "mystical properties that transcend its material circumstances," as explained by Jarrod Rawlins, the museum's director of curatorial affairs. He added, "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" is more than just an album, so it had to be included in this exhibition.
The album is locked in a legal agreement, making it impossible to be commercially exploited until 2103. However, it can be played during private listening parties. Wu-Tang Clan announced back in March 2014 that they'd make one copy of "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" and sell it to the highest bidder. The unique album came with a hand-carved box and a leather-bound book of parchment paper containing lyrics and its backstory.
The Wu-Tang Clan wanted to create a piece of art like no one had before by limiting the release to one copy, as RZA, a member of the group, explained to Forbes in 2014. They did this as a protest against the devaluation of music in the digital age.
The unique story behind this album includes a wealthy entrepreneur with a questionable past getting his hands on it in 2015. Martin Shkreli, known as "Pharma Bro," paid around $2 million for the album, making it the most expensive music album ever sold at the time. He got in trouble with the law later on, and the US federal authorities seized the album. In 2021, the US Justice Department sold the album, but they didn't disclose the buyer.
Later that year, digital art collective PleasrDAO confirmed that they had bought the album using cryptocurrency. While they didn't reveal how much they spent, it was reported in the New York Times that it cost the equivalent of $4 million. They didn't just buy the album for its musical value; they wanted to own a part of this one-of-a-kind hip-hop history.
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Visitors to Mona's exhibition will not only appreciate the musical nuances of the Wu-Tang Clan's album but also admire its style as a work of art in the broader context of the 'Namedropping' display. Furthermore, the museum's curatorial affairs director, Jarrod Rawlins, highlighted that the album's mystical properties and significance in the world of arts fundamentally justify its inclusion in this unique exhibit.
Source: edition.cnn.com
