A silver lining, of sorts, to last night’s unexpected Donald Trump victory: Pharma bro Martin Shkreli is making good on his word to put out his unreleased Wu-Tang Clan album.
Shkreli—the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, arrested last year on securities fraud charges and dubbed “most hated man in America” for price-gorging patients dependent on HIV as cancer treatment drugs—purchased an exclusive new Wu-Tang Clan album for $2 million in November 2015. Only one copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was created, making it the rarest album in music history, and the album remained Shkreli’s property after his arrest.
The former executive taunted Twitter last month with a promise to release the album in the event of a Donald Trump presidential win, and to destroy it if Hillary Clinton cinched the election.
Well.
It’s not quite the whole album, but Shkreli livestreamed several minutes of the record on YouTube this morning (Nov. 9).
Shkreli claimed he couldn’t release all the tracks, as he’d have to negotiate the terms of a wider release with members of the hip-hop collective themselves—and also added that he genuinely didn’t expect Trump to win.
But promises are promises (right, Kanye?) and significant bits of the album have been captured in the videos above.
As Bob Marley once said, “One good thing about music: when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Grab those headphones.