The Wu-Tang Clan‘s place in music history is most certainly cemented, thanks in part to their blistering 1993 debut album Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Although the end of 2014 gave us the group’s sixth studio album A Better Tomorrow, a secret double LP won’t see release until around 88 years from now.
The album, titled Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, has been the discussion of Wu fans the world over and the development of the record has indeed been on the minds of outsiders too. Forbes‘ Zack O’Malley Greenburg has been following the story heavily, and the auctioning the one-of-a-kind, 31-track album has been the talk of the industry.
Partnering with a new auction house, the LP will go to the highest bidder with Wu-Tang Clan producer Cilvaringz telling Greenburg that the owner will be able to release the product commercially around the year 2103.
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Early this year, Wu-Tang settled on Paddle8, an upstart auction house founded by LVMH veteran Alexander Gilkes and Harvard Business School grad Aditya Julka (investors include the Mellon family and Damien Hirst, along with more traditional venture capital firms). Paddle8 has already sold works by the likes of Hirst, Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons.
“We are honored that the Wu-Tang Clan has selected Paddle8 as the exclusive partner for the extraordinary sale of their one-of-a-kind album—a work of art that brings together the nine voices of the Wu-Tang Clan, perhaps for the last time,” said Gilkes in a statement. “The album is a boundary-pushing masterpiece, and we are eager to make it available to Paddle8′s global collecting audience.”
RZA goes into deeper detail on a new microsite by way of Paddle8, and the Abbot explains that the album should be considered a “unique original” of a piece of collector’s art. Recently, the album was kept safely locked away in Marrakech inside a vault at the Royal Mansour hotel. The box and jewel case for Once Upon A Time In Shaolin was designed by British-Moroccan artist Yahya.
Read more details about the Wu-Tang Clan’s secret album over at Forbes.
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Photo: Paddle8
