A vilified pharmaceutical executive who bought AIDS drugs and raised its price by 5,000% has now paid $2 million for the only existing copy of the Wu-Tang Clan's latest album — and he hasn't even listened to it yet.
Martin Shkreli — who had the honor of being criticized by both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton after his company bought the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 — is now the sole owner of the hip-hop collective's album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," Bloomberg reported.
There is only one copy of the album, which has been in the works for seven years. Robert "RZA" Diggs said that the copy would be sold to the highest bidder who had freedom to do what they want with the album.
After failed attempts by fans to crowdfund money to buy the album and release it for free online, it was eventually bought by Shkreli through online auction house Paddle8, Bloomberg reported.
Shkreli told Bloomberg he originally became taken with the Staten Island hip-hop collective when he heard the song "C.R.E.A.M.," which stand for "Cash Rules Everything Around Me," and thought buying "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" would give him the chance to hang out with celebrities and rappers dying to hear it.
“Then I really became convinced that I should be the buyer,” Shkreli told Bloomberg.
For fans hoping that Shkreli might release the album for free to gain some good karma after he was called "the most hated man in America" by the BBC, Shkreli said he hasn't even listened to it yet and is saving it — hopefully for when Taylor Swift gives him a call.
"I could be convinced to listen to it earlier if Taylor Swift wants to hear it or something like that,” Shkreli told Bloomberg. “But for now, I think I’m going to kind of save it for a rainy day.”
To make music fans even more depressed, Shkreli is also the owner of a Visa card previously owned by Kurt Cobain, which he uses to delight people at dinners when he pretends to pay with it, Bloomberg reported.
Everything is the worst.
