New Music Industry Watch original article, unauthorized refusal to reprint
Author | EB Gao Mengbo
On September 10, 2021, under the security of four armed bodyguards, Jamis Johnson drove to a thermostatic storage room in Manhattan, New York. Here, he will see the Guinness Book of World Records approved "the most expensive album ever", the mysterious album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin", the only surviving mysterious album of the famous rap group Wu-Tang Clan.
On behalf of a collecting group called PleasantDAO, Jamis bought Once Upon a Time in Shaolin from the government for $4 million, becoming the new owner of the legendary album. The last collector was Martin Shkreli, the "number one villain in the web" and ceo of a pharmaceutical company nicknamed "Pharma Bro." After being jailed for fraud in March 2018, his property was confiscated and sold at this year's judicial auction.
The surviving "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" album also comes with a strange purchase agreement: buyers cannot commercially develop for 88 years.
Want to hear this album on Spotify? Wait until 2103.
Albums that don't exist
"The album 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' simply doesn't exist!"
In a video interview exclusive to Forbes magazine, album producer Cilvaringz showed reporters the dizzying outer packaging of the album in a cramped secret room, but when the reporter opened the three-layer nested box, he found it empty. "For the sake of safety, the CD isn't here," the producer explains to him with a smile.
The fans' conspiracy theories are not entirely unreasonable, and at the beginning of its birth, the album was wrapped in layers of mystery, and the repeated changes of hands since then have added legendary color to it.
After six years of secret recording, the only copy of "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" went into the Vault vault
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is the seventh studio album by super rap group Wu-Tang Clan, and is limited to one copy. After six years of secret recording, a unique double-CD copy was made in 2014, hidden in a private safe at the Royal Mansour Marrakech Hotel in Morocco, where all mastering backups were subsequently destroyed.
In order to prevent leaks, producer Cilvaringz did not even send real beats to the members during the recording process, but provided the same bpm speed, feeling close to the "stand-in beat", and only added the vocals to the real beats in the later stages. To this day, "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" does not have a formal track list, and Paddle8 auction house provides a list of nearly 30 songs when introducing the lot, but it is also marked as "not representative of the final song title".
Even fewer people have actually listened to the album. At the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2015, Wu-Tang Clan played a 13-minute clip of the album to 154 guests from the art and collecting worlds —13 minutes without any audio and video recordings flowing out, and all the guests' electronic devices were confiscated in advance.
Wudang is not easy to mess with
"The album only sells this one" is not a way for ordinary artists to dare to think. But the Wu-Tang Clan is no ordinary entertainer.
On October 27 this year, the second season of streaming platform Hulu's "Wu-Tang: An American Saga" series was completed in critical reviews and announced a renewal for a third season. For the series, Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA even declined Leonardo DiCaprio's big movie offer. This series that reviews the early history of Wudang has also triggered many fans to remember the "golden age of rap".
The Wu-Tang Clan never embraced the mainstream, but made hardcore rap the mainstream of street culture
With the debut of a number of powerful rappers such as Biggie, Nas, Jay-Z, etc., Wu-Tang Clan has been established for nearly 30 years, which is not only a living fossil of the golden age of rap, but also a part of popular culture. His debut album includes rap titles such as "C.R.E.A.M." and "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing ta F' Wit", and is recognized as one of the greatest rap albums of all time.
Different from the popular "big brother with little brother" model in the rap circle, the nine core members of the Wu-Tang Clan are all on their own, and under the banner of Wudang, the strategy of "one person is an IP" is even reflected in the legal level: Method Man in Def Jam, Ghostface Killah at Sony, GZA in Geffen... Each member has an independent artist contract belonging to a different record label, but each of their solo albums also has a Razor Sharp Records icon belonging to the Wu-Tang Clan.
This unique arrangement also made many record labels reluctant to handle Wu-Tang Clan's debut album. After Loud Records finally helped the group to release films, the members' successive solo albums have also won gold and platinum records, and produced a large number of classic albums such as "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...", "Liquid Swords", "Ironman" and so on.
To some extent, this strategy allowed Wu-Tang Clan to build a rap version of the "Marvel Hero Universe", which not only had a profound influence in the rap world, shaping the east coast hardcore rap, but also continued to be active with the members' four-sided attack, leaving a "W" mark everywhere in popular culture.
It is such a super group that everyone can sell millions of records, make a double CD album, but only sell one, and set a rule for potential buyers that "no commercial development is allowed for 88 years".
Who's going to do the wrong?
As soon as "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" was released, it caused controversy, some people dismissed it as elitism, some people worried that Wudang's reputation would go with the album, and when Musk's space rival richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic, declared that "this album is cool", people worried that he would buy the album and put it into a rocket to shoot at the sun.
In 2015, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was sold at Paddle8 Auction House for $2 million, setting a Guinness World Record and becoming the highest-priced musical work ever made. When the dust settles, the buyer reveals himself: it turns out to be Martin Sklee, a high-profile, notorious hedge fund manager and pharmaceutical CEO.
"At the end of the day, to respect art." In an interview with rap radio show The Breakfast Club, Martin's tone was somewhat understated.
Martin is a low-born, self-made super-rich man whose parents are security guards and cleaners. In the face of the host's repeated difficulties in the interview, he easily resolved in three words and two words, and a cute and intelligent energy, which attracted many comments to praise him as "a real person".
It was this "real person" who was on the cusp of public opinion because of the price of drugs. Turing Pharmaceuticals, which he founded, bought out a drug called Daraprim for $55 million, a lifesaver for AIDS patients. He then raised the price of $13.5/tablet to $750/tablet, a 55-fold increase overnight. Asked in the media whether he regretted the decision to increase prices, he said amazingly that "if he had known it, he would have increased it tenfold more".
It even got to the point of Congress. In the process of being questioned by Congress, Martin always invoked constitutional power to avoid answering all questions, with a mysterious shallow smile.
During the interrogation, he laughed and said nothing, and Martin even took the oath with a "huh-huh" expression
"In the hands of the ultimate buyer, this album is like the scepter of the Egyptian pharaohs, unique and powerful." When releasing "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin", RZA once imagined: "No one can guess what kind of person the collector really is, and this is the most interesting." ”
The "most hated scum" may not be the ideal master. Martin's mischievous behavior caused dissatisfaction among music fans and even members of the group. Method Man once put "X's album" in the media, and another core member, Ghostface Killah, also shelled Martin in the drug price storm, and the latter did not show weakness to shoot a video back. After that, Martin threatened to "live stream "Shaolin Past" several times and repeatedly reneged on his promise, and even threatened to "break the plate online" after being questioned - to know that the album is only this one, there is no copy.
The farce ended with Martin being convicted of fraud in March 2018, after which Martin once posted "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" on the auction site eBay, but was confiscated before it could be sold.
Look back at the Renaissance
"If you want to see the Mona Lisa, what are you going to do?"
When "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" was first released to the outside world in 2014, RZA questioned the "depreciation of music". "To go to the Louvre in Paris, you need to devote time and energy to it, and finally face to face with the work alone, and feel her intently – we hope that the audience of 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' will have a similar listening experience."
Around 2014, the year when the streaming media represented by Spotify and Apple Music began to rise, and the consumption habits of music are quietly changing. The musicians painstakingly arranged the album's tracks, only to be picked by the listener to pick two songs and put them on the playlist. The headline "Million broadcasts only get 100 yuan royalties" is not uncommon. Music has become as easy as tap water, entertainment and artistic attributes have begun to fade, and for more people, music has become a background basic service.
From indie artists to superstars, musicians explore ways to cope with each other. On July 4, 2013, Jay-Z's new album Magna Carta Holy Grail was "automatically platinum" on the day of its release: Samsung purchased one million copies of the digital album and made them available to Samsung mobile phone users free of charge through the app.
At the end of the same year, Nipsey Hussle, an indie rapper who had yet to become famous at the time, announced that the mixtape album Crenshaw was priced at $100 each and limited to 1,000 copies — a bold attempt that, by convention, should be free— also caught the attention of Jay-Z, who bought 100 copies alone and posted photos on his blog with a succinct and powerful caption: New Rules (#NewRules).
The Louvre clears the scene to shoot the Jay-Z couple's MV: Streaming makes music seem cheap, but not everyone is affected
For some collectors and artists, the Wu-Tang Clan's approach to streaming is to look back at the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: a few wealthy patrons funded the appreciation of creators, from which almost all Renaissance masterpieces were born. As the forms of music sales for the masses, such as CDs and digital albums, were in decline, Wu-Tang Clan was counting on a strong patron to pay for new albums and the idea that "music is worth it."
This bold experiment is a story that is still evolving. Some people think that The medicine brother's "respect for art" is a hype to show off wealth, some people laugh that the appearance of The PleasantDAO has made the album owner "change from a freak to a bunch of weirdos", but some people feel that when this rap album needs four bodyguards with guns to escort them, The Wu-Tang Clan has won.
Ancestor NFT
"This unique album is, in a way, the NFT before the NFT," Said PleaserDAO spokesman Jamis, escorted by a gunboy bodyguard.
PleaserDAO is made up of 74 NFT collectors with diverse backgrounds
PleaserDAO is an organization of NFT collectors whose mission is to "collect culturally significant collections." When "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" appeared on the federal government's list of judicial auctions, they offered the government to pay for the transaction in $4 million worth of virtual currency — and the federal government certainly didn't buy it. PleaserDAO turned to the deal through an intermediary: They paid $4 million worth of virtual currency to the lawyer, who bought the album from the federal government in fiat currency.
At the time of the release of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, RZA "does not expect to bring about change overnight, but hopes to arouse more attention and discussion on the value of music and promote change."
More than 7 years later, streaming giant Spotify has surpassed $9.5 billion in annual revenue but is still losing money (2020). Patreon, a creator platform based on the "patron model," has brought in $1 billion in revenue to creators (as of 2017), with NFTs and metaverses becoming new focal points for musical value. The fantasy story of "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" as the most expensive album in history continues, and the questions it raises continue to trigger new explorations and attempts.
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