Music

The secret Wu-Tang album sold for millions and won't be out for 88 years

by Jesse Locke

This spring, the RZA unveiled the Wu-Tang Holy Grail: A secret album called Once Upon a Time in Shaolin in an edition of one. A press release now reports that it has sold to “a private American collector” for a figure “in the millions.” Wu-Tang isn’t for the children anymore.

Hoity toity art world terms describe the album as “an audio artifact”, “a sonic sculpture”, and “a retrospective soundscape that threads 31 songs, skits, and stories into a 128-minute-long aural screenplay.” It comes in “a hand-carved nickel-silver box, with a 174-page manuscript… printed on gilded Fedrigoni Marina parchment and encased in leather by a master bookbinder.” Even if you’ve memorized The Wu-Tang Manual, you’re still a poser without this.

Wildest of all, Shaolin‘s contract stipulates an 88-year waiting period before the buyer can share any of its music with the public. There will be a one-time-only listening party at New York’s Museum of Modern Art next March with the RZA hitting play on a 13-minute compilation of tracks from the album. The great hip-hop swindle is justified as “a challenge to the increasing disposability of music in the digital era.”

If you’re baffled by the whole thing, don’t worry – Method Man thinks it’s stupid too.