*Method Man may have the best of both worlds with musical success and overdue recognition for acting credentials dating back to the late ’90s, but the “Power Book II: Ghost” fixture has never abandoned what brought him to the table.
Most notably his status as one of the best MCs to touch a mic as a solo artist and member of the Wu-Tang Clan. Mr. Meth is a proud member of the lyrical collective, but even he wasn’t immune to the chatter and debacle that was the Clan’s seventh album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.”
Years after its 2015 release, the controversial offering still generates conversation among fans. For Meth, “Once Upon A Time in Shaolin” is an “uncomfortable subject he and his fellow Clan members have no love for.
Chatting with Vanity Fair, the Meth touched on the “Once Upon a Time” album and its shady background, labeling the project a “circus spectacle.” To hear him tell it, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was never meant to be a Wu-Tang Clan album. It was more an effort featuring old and new verses pieced together by an unnamed financier.
“I thought it was some circus spectacle,” Meth said while detailing how things changed regarding the making of the album and whether it is an official Wu-Tang project. “I never really spoke to RZA about it; it’s an uncomfortable subject to most of the guys, so we don’t really discuss it too much. The process of the thing being made was never told to us. We were never told what it was.
“It was never supposed to be a Wu-Tang album,” the “Release Yo’ Delf” lyricist continued. “We were recording and being paid to do a certain amount of records by a guy whose name I don’t want to mention. He took all these verses—some of them were old verses—and put them all together into a compilation of Wu-Tang songs and marketed it as a Wu-Tang album, and a single copy of a Wu-Tang album. We all had a problem with it because that’s not how it was described to us.”
Meth’s comments mark the latest complication surrounding the “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” The album is noted for producing only one copy without any means to download or stream it.
In 2015, “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli bought “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” for $2 million. The businessman’s failed attempts to sell the album on eBay amid legal troubles resulted in the government seizing the record and auctioning it off to PleasrDAO in 2021 for $4.75 million.
Shift over to last month and the legal drama continues, with PleasrDAO filing a civil suit against Shkreli. The company, which buys non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that honor “anti-establishment rebels,” claimed Shkreli held onto copies of the “Once Upon a Time…” album and was playing the album for others on the internet.
A temporary order from a judge was later put on Shkreli from disseminating or selling the album.
According to MSN (per Variety), a hearing to review the situation is currently scheduled for Aug.23 in Brooklyn.
Soon after the restraining order was issued, PleasrDAO took action by making a five-minute sampler of “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” available as a $1 purchase on thealbum.com.
Revealing its reason behind the action, PleasrDAO stated the sample was put up for sale to bring them one step closer to getting the full “Once Upon a Time” project out before its contractual release date of October 8, 2103.
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