For nearly a decade, Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin has been the most elusive album in modern music: a single physical copy, locked away by legal agreement, heard by only a small circle of people. That changed — at least partially — this week when the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out published an episode about the record and played two snippets for the public. The episode also gave Wu-Tang Clan member Method Man his first chance to hear the album, a moment captured on video that quickly became the story’s emotional center.

A Secret Album Meets a Strange Afterlife

Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was never meant to be a normal release. The album exists as a single copy, and its legal terms forbid commercial release until 2103. That constraint has turned it into a bizarre artifact at the intersection of hip-hop, finance, law, and crypto. In 2015, disgraced pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli bought the only copy at auction for a reported $2 million. He later had to forfeit it to the U.S. government after his conviction for securities fraud, and in 2021 the government sold it to the crypto art collective PleasrDAO.

The Verge, which reported on the podcast episode, emphasized how difficult the album has been to hear and noted that the public can now listen to two snippets. The episode, according to The Verge, goes into detail about the album’s long and unusual history. That history includes Shkreli’s ownership, his legal downfall, and the government’s eventual sale to PleasrDAO, a group whose involvement added another layer of intrigue because it ties the album to the world of blockchain-based art and digital collectibles.

Method Man’s First Listen

Billboard focused on the human reaction at the center of the story: Method Man finally hearing Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for the first time. The outlet reported on how he reacted, while MSN highlighted the video of his face as he listened. That visual moment matters because Method Man is not just any listener. He is a Wu-Tang Clan member, and the album’s extreme secrecy meant that even an artist associated with the group had not heard the finished work.

HotNewHipHop framed the episode around Pablo Torre finding the album and playing it for Method Man. The clip, highlighted by MSN, turns Method Man’s expression into the story: viewers can watch him take in music that had been effectively sealed off from the world. The podcast episode does not make the full album available, but it does crack open the vault just enough to let the public hear a piece of the legend.

The album cannot be commercially released until 2103, making every listen a rare event.

From Shkreli to PleasrDAO

The album’s journey is almost as strange as its contents. Shkreli, once known as ‘Pharma Bro,’ purchased the sole copy in 2015 at auction. After his conviction, the U.S. government took possession of the album and later sold it in 2021 to PleasrDAO. The sale represented a collision of old-school music-industry scarcity and new-school crypto wealth. PleasrDAO is a collective known for acquiring culturally significant digital assets, and its ownership of a Wu-Tang Clan album made for an unlikely pairing that has kept the story alive.

Even with new owners, the album’s core restriction remains: it cannot be commercially released until 2103. That means the snippets played on Pablo Torre Finds Out are not a prelude to a streaming release. They are anomalies — brief windows into a project designed to resist the normal rules of the music business. The Verge noted that the album has been extremely difficult to listen to, and the podcast episode is one of the few times the public has been allowed even a partial hearing.

A Netflix Documentary and the Battle Over Context

An upcoming Netflix documentary will explore the secret album, according to MSN. That project promises to bring the story to a much larger audience, potentially adding new interviews, archival material, and context about how the album was made and why it was released under such restrictive terms. The documentary also ensures that the album’s mythology will continue to grow, even if the music itself remains mostly unheard.

Each outlet frames the story differently. The Verge treats it as a tech and legal curiosity, focusing on the album’s unavailability and the strange path that made two snippets newly accessible. Billboard centers the musician’s experience, asking how Method Man reacted to finally hearing the work. MSN leans into the visual power of his face, while HotNewHipHop emphasizes the hip-hop cultural moment of Pablo Torre playing the record for a Wu-Tang legend. Together, these perspectives show how the album functions as both a music story and a broader cultural puzzle.

Why It Still Matters

The album is a throwback to an era when physical scarcity could create enormous value, but it is also a preview of how art, law, and technology might collide in the future. Its 2103 release date makes it a kind of time capsule, a piece of music designed to outlast most of its listeners. The involvement of Shkreli and PleasrDAO adds questions about ownership, access, and whether art should be treated as an asset, a trophy, or a shared cultural inheritance.

• The full album remains unavailable commercially until 2103.
• PleasrDAO holds the sole copy after purchasing it from the U.S. government in 2021.
• An upcoming Netflix documentary will explore the album’s history.
• The Pablo Torre Finds Out episode is available now, featuring two snippets and Method Man’s first listen.

For now, the world gets two snippets, Method Man gets a long-delayed first listen, and Once Upon a Time in Shaolin remains what it has always been: less an album than a myth with a release date in the next century.