Martin Shkreli cannot drag Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA into his messy legal battle over the group’s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a federal judge says, blasting his request as “astonishingly devoid of support.”
Shkreli, facing a lawsuit claiming he illegally retained copies of the ultra-rare record, had argued that RZA (Robert Diggs) and producer Cilvaringz (Tarik Azzougarh) were “indispensable parties” to the case. But in a ruling Monday, Judge Pamela Chen flatly refused to force the famed rapper to join the litigation.
“In a motion astonishingly devoid of support, Shkreli asserts that Diggs and Azzougarh are necessary parties,” the judge said. “But speculation is all that Shkreli offers.”
Once Upon, one of hip hop’s most legendary secrets, was published just once on a CD secured in an engraved nickel and silver box. It also came with bizarre legal stipulations, including that it couldn’t be released to the general public until 2103.
Shkreli bought the album at auction in 2015, shortly before he became the infamous “Pharma Bro” who spiked the price of AIDS drugs. But after he was convicted of securities fraud in 2017, he forfeited it to prosecutors to help pay a huge restitution sentence.
Pleasr then bought Once Upon from the government in 2021 for $4 million; in 2024, the group says, it acquired copyrights and other rights for another $750,000. The group has spent the last few years trying to monetize it, playing it at private events and selling extremely limited access via blockchain offerings.
Related
In 2024, with Shkreli making public threats to release the album on the internet, Pleasr sued him in federal court, warning such a leak would destroy the asset it had purchased. And last month, a federal judge said Pleasr’s case could move ahead toward trial – ruling that the rare album might qualify as a “trade secret” that Shkreli essentially stole.
Last fall, Shkreli made a surprise move: he said the case could not be resolved unless RZA and Cilvaringz were forced to participate in the case. He claimed they had “conflicting interests in the same property,” and that the case would need to wade into the original purchase agreement for Once Upon that he had inked with the musicians back in 2015.
But on Monday, Judge Chen said that claim was clearly “unpersuasive.” She said that nobody was seeking to deprive RZA and Cilvaringz of any rights, and that Shkreli’s attorneys were trying to “manufacture” such a situation with an argument that “cherry-picks” details: “Thus, the court finds that Shkreli has not met his burden of proving that Diggs and Azzougarh are necessary parties.”
Following the ruling, the case will now move ahead into more litigation, including discovery and an eventual trial on Pleasr’s allegations against Shkreli. In a statement, the company’s attorney Stephen Cooper said: “This baseless motion by Mr. Shkreli was no more than a delay tactic, which the court soundly rejected. Pleasr will now proceed with its case to recover on its claims against the defendant.”
A rep for RZA and an attorney for Shkreli both did not return requests for comment on Tuesday.
