Inside a delicately hand-carved silver box on display in an Australian museum lies the most exclusive, most valuable, and perhaps most infamous album in the world.
And this weekend, I became one of the lucky few on the planet to have heard it.
Recorded in secret over six years by trailblazing hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was designed to be a piece of fine art.
Only a single CD copy exists – and with it comes a legal stipulation that the owner cannot publicly release the 31 tracks until 2103.
The record, which features the nine surviving members of the group, is currently on loan to Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) – a gallery so well known for its headline-catching art some dub it Australia’s “Temple of Weird”.
First conceived during the pandemic, the museum’s new Namedropping exhibition explores why humans chase things that signal status and notoriety.
