Cyrus Langhorne
Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA recently spoke out on wealthy businessman Martin Shkreli buying his group’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album and the FBI arresting him last month on criminal charges.
According to RZA, he almost reached out to Shkreli after learning about the FBI raid.
“He bought it, he can do what he wants,” RZA said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s John Heilemann on the program “With All Due Respect.” “Art — the beautiful thing about art, from my standpoint, is that it has no discrimination.” Despite some of the rapper’s criticisms of Shkreli, the sale is done. “What we’ve done is historical, and you can’t remove that.” … RZA sounded unperturbed. “I thought about calling him, personally [after his arrest],” the rapper said. (Bloomberg Politics)
The FBI addressed Shkreli’s status and denied seizing his pricey Wu album last month.
1:20 PM PST – The FBI just released a statement saying they didn’t seize Shkreli’s Wu-Tang Clan album. He’s been released on a $5 million bond.
According to reports, Shkreli has a federal case against him and is accused of making secret payoffs.
Martin Shkreli, 32, ignited a firestorm over drug prices in September and became a symbol of defiant greed. The federal case against him has nothing to do with pharmaceutical costs, however. Prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where he’d been chief executive officer, and sued by its board. (Bloomberg Business)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahe3uEtX1Ds
Earlier the same month, Shkreli spoke out on posting the winning bid for Wu’s album.
He hasn’t listened to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin yet. He’s saving that for a time when he’s feeling low and needs something to lift his spirits. “I could be convinced to listen to it earlier if Taylor Swift wants to hear it or something like that,” Shkreli says. “But for now, I think I’m going to kind of save it for a rainy day.” (Bloomberg Business)
