Shkreli, who became one of the most hated people after increasing the price of an AIDS drug by more than 5000 percent, reportedly paid $2 million for the one-of-a-kind record.
- Dec 10, 2015
AceShowbiz - Still wondering who's the secret buyer of that secret Wu-Tang Clan album? Bloomberg Business has revealed that the sole copy of the one-of-a-kind record titled "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" went to Turing Pharmaceuticals' founder Martin Shkreli following an online auction earlier this year.
Shkreli is interestingly one of the most hated people in the country right now. He's been widely criticized after he increased the price of the drug Daraprim, which is mainly used by cancer/HIV-AIDS patients, from $13.50 to $750 per tablet.
According to the site, Shkreli shelled our $2 million for the album which took the iconic hip-hop collective six years to finish. Due to his bad reputation, he was afraid the Wus would cancel plan to sell the record to him.
"I was a little worried that they were going to walk out of the deal," Shkreli told Bloomberg. "But by then we'd closed. The whole kind of thing since then has been just kind of, 'Well, do we want to announce it's him? Do we not want to announce it's him?' I think they were trying to cover their butts a little bit."
Defending the sale to the controversial pharmaceutical executive, Wu-Tang Clan's RZA said that the deal was closed months before Shkreli's AIDS pill antics. He then said that some money the group earned from the album was donated to a charity. "We decided to give a significant portion of the proceeds to charity," the rapper explained.
The news about Shkreli being the buyer of the album left so many Wu-Tang Clan fans unimpressed. They got even more upset after he revealed he hadn't listened to the project yet and asked his followers on Twitter whose private albums he should purchase next.
If there is a curious gap in your favorite artist's discography, well, now you know why.
— Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) December 9, 2015"If there is a curious gap in your favorite artist's discography, well, now you know why," he tweeted on Wednesday, December 9. "Next album to acquire?" he wrote in another post and asked his followers to pick between Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Neil Young or The Smiths.
Next album to acquire?
— Martin Shkreli (@MartinShkreli) December 9, 2015
