Martin Shkreli back in hip hop headlines.

The one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin has had a tumultuous journey this year. Once held solely by former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli, the album is now in the hands of digital art collective PleasrDAO. They plan to release it through partial NFT ownership. According to Billboard, a court has now ruled in favor of PleasrDAO, ordering Shkreli to surrender any remaining copies of the album he possesses.

Back in 2021, authorities confiscated the album as part of a $7.4 million judgment against Shkreli related to a securities fraud case. Despite this, Shkreli continued to livestream snippets of the album and boasted about creating additional copies.

The court’s decision aims to protect the album’s unique status as a one-of-one release while also penalizing Shkreli for violating the original purchase agreement and forfeiture order. The court prohibited Shkreli from “possessing, using, disseminating, or selling any interest in the album,” including its digital files or contents. By August 30, Shkreli must “sequester and turn over all of his copies, in any form.” He also has until September 30 to file an affidavit detailing the whereabouts of any copies he distributed, to whom he may have given them, and any profits he might have earned from sharing or playing the album.

METHOD MAN ON ONCE UPON A TIME IN SHAOLIN

Meanwhile, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin remains a sensitive topic among the Wu-Tang Clan members. Method Man expressed his frustration about the project to Vanity Fair: “I thought it was some circus spectacle,” he said. “I never really spoke to RZA about it. It’s an uncomfortable subject for most of the guys, so we don’t discuss it much. We were never told what it was; we were just recording and being paid to make tracks.”

RZA was on Joe Rogan’s podcast and explained the conversation he had with Martin Shkreli. “I did have a conversation with the gentleman… I said listen yo, because he had a lot of bad things going on for him, I said yo, if I was you I would take this chance to do philanthropy and I would give this away to the public,” RZA claimed. “If I was him, based on how much he had taken from the public.”