The complaint was brought by PleasrDAO, the digital arts collective that bought Once Upon a Time in Shaolin from the convicted pharmaceutical exec for $4 million
Convicted pharmaceutical executiveMartin Shkreli was hit with a lawsuit over his own claims that he copied and distributed the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan albumOnce Upon a Time in Shaolin.
The suit was filed by PleasrDAO, a digital art collective that purchased the album from Shkreli in 2021 after Shkreli was ordered to fork it over to cover a $7.4 million forfeiture tied to his 2017 fraud conviction. (Shkreli purchased the album for $2 million; PleasrDAO paid double that.) According to the lawsuit, Shkreli violated the terms of both the original purchase agreement and the forfeiture order by allegedly making and retaining a digital copy of the album, playing it during his live streams, and sending it to others.
Shkreli was released from prison on May 18, 2022, and within a month, according to the lawsuit, he admitted during a livestream that he was playing Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for his followers. “Yeah, that’s the Wu-Tang album for all you crazy streamer people,” Shkreli allegedly said.
A few days later, on June 22, 2022, Shkreli allegedly admitted to still having a copy of the album, adding, “I was playing it on YouTube the other night even though somebody paid $4 million for it.” Then, on a June 30, 2022 stream, Shkreli allegedly played portions of the album again and said, “Of course I made MP3 copies, they’re like hidden in safes all around the world… I’m not stupid. I don’t buy something for two million dollars just so I can keep one copy.”
Then, earlier this year, Shkreli appeared to troll Pleasr directly. After the collective posted a photo of the album on Twitter, Shkreli allegedly posted numerous replies like: “LOL I have the mp3s you moron”; “I literally play it in my discord all the time”; “this thread is about someone listening to a CD >5000 people have…”; and “yeah I have the music, sold the plastic.” In response to some folks in the same thread expressing a desire to hear the album, Shkrelli allegedly said, “i can just upload the mp3s if you want? email addy?”
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Impressively, there was more. In a YouTube video from this past May, Shkreli said he “burned the album and sent it to like, 50 different chicks,” before quipping, “Do you know how many blowj*bs that album got me?” Not long after, he posted on X, “look out for a torrent im sick of this sh*t @PleasrDAO.” And then, as recently as this past Sunday, June 9, Shkreli allegedly played the album during a “Spaces” session on X to an estimated 4,900 listeners.
Pleasr are asking the court to make Shkreli destroy his copies of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and forfeit any money he may have made from sharing the album. They’re also seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
Shkreli, unsurprisingly, was not phased by the lawsuit. After Pleasr posted about the complaint on X, Shkreli replied, “PleasrDAO never voted or discussed this litigation with members. You will easily lose this legal retardation. The pleasr members don’t support this gayness. See you in court!”
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Shkreli did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for further comment. A rep for the Wu-Tang Clan also did not immediately return a request for comment.
The lawsuit comes a few days before the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Australia, opens an exhibition that will feature Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, on loan from Pleasr. The exhibit will run June 15 through 24, and selections from the album will be played during 30-minute listening sessions offered twice a day.
The convicted pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli has been sued in New York by a digital art collective that said it paid $4.75m for a one-of-a-kind album by the hip-hop group Wu-Tang
Wu-Tang
Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop musical collective formed in Staten Island, New York City, in 1992. Its members include RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and, until his death in 2004, Ol' Dirty Bastard. Close affiliate Cappadonna later became an official member.
The art collective that bought the secret album from the government, PleasrDAO, sued Shkreli in June, alleging that he duplicated the album, sent copies of it to other people and played parts of it during live streams in violation of his original purchase agreement when the Wu-Tang Clan auctioned it off.
So-called “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli has been ordered by a federal judge to turn over all copies of the ultra-rare unreleased 2015 Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and is barred from streaming any additional content from the record.
Shkreli bought the only copy of Wu-Tang's double album, “Once Upon a Time In Shaolin,” for $2 million in 2015, just days before his company raised the price of its AIDS drug. The hip-hop group did not know the reviled Shkreli was the buyer.
The album was recorded in secret over six years from 2007 to 2013. A single two-CD copy was pressed in 2014 and stored in a secured vault at the Royal Mansour Hotel in Casablanca, Morocco, then sold through auction house Paddle8 in 2015.
The surreptitious Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin maintains its advocacy for valuing music in the digital age. Under the ownership of PleasrDAO, the digital art collective, the album is now available to the public as an NFT for at least $1, highlighting a pivotal shift from its exclusive past.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was originally sold to Shkreli for $2 million back in 2015, after he rose to infamy for hiking the price of a critical Aids drug that same year.
World's rarest album, Wu-Tang Clan's single-copy 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin', headed to Australian museum. NEW YORK (AP) — The sole physical copy of Wu-Tang Clan's unreleased “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” is headed to Australia's Museum of Old and New Art.
Ghostface reportedly filed the suit in 2005, accusing RZA – aka Robert Diggs – of withholding royalties from several early Wu-Tang Clan albums. According to Ghostface, RZA should have received the same share of royalties as the rest of the group, not the 50% cut he claimed as producer.
"I don't think the world had ever seen something so potent at one time," Raekwon tells the Recording Academy. "No one had seen a group of nine emcees like us with so much charisma and talent." Vision helped, too. You cannot discuss the success of Wu without mentioning RZA, the mastermind behind the Wu collective.
For during the '90s and early '00s, the FBI had targeted the Wu-Tang Clan, branding it a criminal enterprise (“the WTC Organization”) that was “heavily involved in the sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons possession, murder, carjackings, and other types of violent crimes.” And from 1999 to 2004, the Bureau sought the ...
Bearer, whose real name is Andre Johnson, shocked his family and friends in 2014 when he sliced off his genitals with a kitchen knife and jumped off the second-story balcony of his condo in North Hollywood.
Remedy. Remedy is a rapper and hip-hop producer. He is known for being the first white and the first Jewish rapper to be affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan. He owns and runs Code Red Entertainment, his label which released Cappadonna's The Struggle album.
Shkreli, 40, became notorious and gained the sobriquet “pharma bro” when, as chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals in 2015, he raised the price of the newly acquired antiparasitic drug Daraprim overnight to $750 per tablet from $17.50.
It costs $4 million dollars! Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is the seventh studio album by the American hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. Only one physical copy of the album was created as an 'art piece' or you could say, as the original NFT, with no ability to download or stream it digitally.
Leader of hiphop collective Wu-Tang Clan, Robert 'RZA' Diggs and producer Tarik 'Cilvaringz' Azzougarh, decided to keep the 31-track album secret as a protest against what they saw as the devaluation of music in the digital era.
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