Martin Shkreli’s latest contemplation will do little to rehab his “most hated man in America” image. The price-gouging pharmaceutical executive has reportedly considered breaking or concealing the Wu-Tang Clan album for which he paid a multi-million dollar sum.
Shkreli, the buyer of the one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for $2 million, is the subject of a new profile at Vice. Its author, Allie Conti, notes: “Shkreli says he vacillates between wanting to destroy the record and dreaming of installing it in some remote place so that people have to make a spiritual quest to listen.”
Shkreli showed-off his expensive purchase for Vice, telling the title: “I’m not just the heel of the music world. I want to be the world’s heel.” (A “heel” is a pro-wrestling term for a bad guy.”)
Shkreli played the album in the background while Conti conducted the interview. “From what I heard,” she told Noisey, “it was definitely better than their last album, although I wouldn’t say it’s worth $2 million necessarily. I really hope Shkreli decides to release it to the public rather than destroy it, which is something he’s mulling over right now.”
Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, became a global hate figure when his firm Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York raised the price of AIDS-fighting drug Daraprim from $13.50 a tablet to $750. He was arrested last December on securities fraud charges. Shkreli was released on $5 million bail from a federal court in Brooklyn and could face up to 20 years in prison.
Meanwhile, Wu-Tang Clan is gearing-up for a three-date tour of Australia, starting Feb. 23 at Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne. Whether the hip-hop legends will play tracks from Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is the two-million dollar question.
This article first appeared on Billboard.com.
