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    Pay $1 to Hear Wu-Tang Clan’s Secret Album (Eventually)

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    An online art collective that spent $4 million on “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” is telling fans their purchases will accelerate the one-of-a-kind album’s 2103 release date.Ten years ago, the most mysterious and expensive album of all time was announced by the Wu-Tang Clan as a protest against the devaluation of creativity in the age of the internet. “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” limited to one hyperdeluxe physical copy, was bought for a reported $2 million by the “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli and later acquired by an online art collective for $4 million.Now it can be yours for a dollar. Sort of.Pleasr, the online collective, began selling access to “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” on Thursday, charging fans $1 (plus fees) to be part of what it called an experiment to test a simple question: “Do people still value music in a digital era?” As befitting an album that has been wrapped in legal and public controversy for a decade, however, the transaction is anything but simple.For $1, fans will gain access to an encrypted digital version of “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” But only a five-minute sampler of the album will be available now, Pleasr says.The Wu-Tang Clan’s original sale contract with Shkreli in 2015 said that “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” could not be released to the public for 88 years — until Oct. 8, 2103 — although the agreement allowed for private viewings and listening sessions.“Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was originally bought by Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical executive. When he was convicted of securities fraud, the federal government seized the album.Richard Drew/Associated PressFor each $1 that Pleasr takes in, the group says it will reduce the waiting period for the full album’s release by 88 seconds. By a rough calculation, it would take about 28 million contributions of $1 apiece to eliminate that delay entirely.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wu-Tang Clan Album ‘Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’ Will Be Played in Tasmania

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      The sole known copy of the album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” was not to be heard by the public until 2103. Some fans will be able to hear a selection of the 31 tracks at a museum in Hobart, Tasmania.A decade ago, the Wu-Tang Clan issued a sole copy of a CD-only album, secured it in an engraved nickel and silver box, locked it away in a vault and said it could not be heard by the public until 2103.The move was seen as a protest against the devaluation of music in the streaming era. But a year later, the album, “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” got caught up in the very capitalistic endeavors that Wu-Tang had tried to avoid, when it was purchased by Martin Shkreli, the disgraced pharmaceutical speculator who was convicted of fraud in 2017.He bought the album at auction for $2 million, only for it to be seized by the government and sold in order to pay off Mr. Shkreli’s nearly $7.4 million debt.As these things go, an NFT collective purchased the album for $4 million in 2021. And soon, if you can get yourself to the island of Tasmania off the southern coast of Australia in two weeks’ time, you might be able to hear what RZA and the producer Cilvaringz created 79 years before it was meant to go public — or a part of it anyway.From June 15 to June 24, the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania’s capital, will host a series of private listening events where visitors will be able to “experience” a selection of the 31 tracks from the group’s seventh studio album. “You hear talk about once-in-a-lifetime opportunities,” the museum wrote on the exhibit page. “This is probably one of them.”Free tickets, “if you are lucky enough to secure” them, the museum said, can be reserved starting Thursday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      RZA of Wu-Tang Clan Has Beef With Meat

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      The rapper, producer, actor and vegan talks about the connections between meat and masculinity, animal welfare and the environment.RZA, the leader of the groundbreaking hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan, is a producer, rapper, writer, director, film scorer and actor. He is also a promoter of a meatless lifestyle.The 54-year-old creator gave up red meat in the mid-1990s, followed by chicken, fish, and eventually dairy and eggs. He has since worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, started a vegan clothing line and appeared in a surreal video series with other Wu-Tang members to promote White Castle’s meatless Impossible Sliders.In a recent interview, RZA, whose real name is Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, talked about why he went vegan, cultural links between masculinity and meat and how going meatless just a few days a week would help the planet. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited and condensed for clarity.There’s increased awareness these days about the environmental harms of meat consumption, particularly beef, along with health concerns. Why did you stop eating it?For me, it was consciousness. It was just the awareness of life itself. It became almost illogical, almost unethical. Why does the animal have to die for me to live? And then learning that our digestive system really has a hard time digesting red meat. As I became more conscious, it started to make less and less and then no sense to eat a dead bird. To even eat a dead fish.What about dairy?Eggs and milk and cheese were the last things to go from my diet. There were multiple reasons. And it was tough. The animal is not dying. It’s the animals being useful. Look, I’m a New Yorker. There’s nothing like the New York slice of pizza. But I realized how much mucus was building up in my own body. And the process of the milk we are consuming is so chemically infused. Even with pasteurization, there’s still other elements of bacteria that are getting into our systems. Eggs was another tough one. But eggs are so porous, and they hit them with chemicals. And there’s mistreatment of those animals. So now you’re consuming that trauma.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wu-Tang Clan Announces Las Vegas Residency

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      The first four concert dates will begin with Super Bowl weekend in February.Wu-Tang Clan will begin a Las Vegas residency in February as the city hosts its first Super Bowl, the Grammy-nominated rap collective announced on Tuesday.Though rap stars frequently perform in Las Vegas for concerts and appearances at nightclubs, it is unclear if a hip-hop group has held a traditional residency, which became popular in the city around the 1940s.“Wu-Tang Clan: The Saga Continues … The Las Vegas Residency” will begin next year at the Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, starting with concerts on Feb. 9-10, Super Bowl weekend, and March 22-23, when fans flock to the city to bet on the N.C.A.A. college basketball tournaments. Tickets go on sale on Friday, and more dates will be released in the coming months.Known for hits like “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” and “Protect Ya Neck,” Wu-Tang Clan recently concluded a tour with the rapper Nas. The group’s leader, Robert Diggs, known as RZA, said the residency had been in the works for about five years and was meant in part to elevate the genre, which has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.“Hip-hop is rich in its content and what it offers creatively to an audience,” he said, adding that the nine-member group, which was founded in New York in the early 1990s, wants “to put it on flagpoles to show that hip-hop can go where any other art form has gone before.”“I think the art form has evolved,” he added.Residencies in Las Vegas this year included the pop artists Adele and Katy Perry. The band U2 will conclude its residency at the Sphere, the video-screen-wrapped orb-like venue built by the Knicks owner James Dolan, in March. Usher Raymond, the R&B star who will headline the Super Bowl halftime show, recently completed a residency in the city.Las Vegas, which has long been known for hosting boxing and mixed martial arts fights, has also expanded its reputation as a destination for other top-caliber sporting events. In addition to hosting the upcoming Super Bowl, the city held its first Formula 1 race in November and saw its professional hockey and women’s basketball teams win championships this past season.RZA said he was hopeful that Wu-Tang Clan’s residency would inspire other rap artists to inject themselves into Las Vegas’s entertainment scene.“I’m in that spirit of loving where there’s a hub of art and then loving that I — in my talent and the Wu-Tang brothers — can add to that hub and of course eventually invite more hip-hop artists to come and play in this sandbox with us,” RZA said. More