Two years ago, Forbes broke the news that famed rap group the Wu-Tang Clan had created, and would soon be auctioning, a single copy of their latest album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin. Literally, a single copy.
The one-of-a-kind production, safeguarded somewhere in “the shadow of the Atlas Mountains,” was soon garnering the kind of predictable hype accompanying pricey modern artwork marketed through sham philosophic statements.
Wu-Tang rapper and producer, RZA had this to say:
Convincing?
RZA, doubtless schooled in the marketing-universities run by Koon and Hirst (each of whom are promoted by the same auction house that promoted the Wu-Tang album), has been instrumental in creating a mythos around the Wu-Tang Clan, a collective, he would have you believe, with its own esoteric philosophy of “warrior codes, numerological systems, and Eastern spiritual ethics.”
Maybe so. What is genius about this messaging, however, is its ability to allow us to redefine low culture in terms of the high. We can all feel good because we are all part of the cognoscenti, all part of the same (at times stated, at times unstated) project of the transvaluation of the arts. Take, for instance, this recent PBS article, “Shakespeare loses to the Wu-Tang Clan in Vocabulary Duel” reporting the idiotic finding that Shakespeare appears to have had a more limited vocabulary than the Wu-Tang Clan. Too bad Daniels could not quantify quality, but then again, how could the Bard beat the late Wu-Tang Clan member Old Dirty Bastard, whose lyrics are not replicable on a family friendly website like this one.
In a twist of fate almost too delicious to be true, the Wu-Tang Clan did manage to sell their album for the world-record price of $2 million—the most expensive single album ever sold—to Wall Street darling, Martin Shkreli. Shkreli, the ODB of the Street, was of course recently arrested for securities fraud.
So what about RZA’s desire to “re-attach values to music for the benefit of all kinds of musicians” or producer Silvaringz claim that the project is about “intensifying debate and really starting to look at music and the value of music in your life.” Well, Shkreli allegedly had this to say: “I just thought it would be funny to keep it from people.”
