It has been reported that Wu-Tang Clan is releasing a secret album called Once Up A Time In Shaolin.

In a recent interview with Forbes, the goal for this special release is to ‘use the album as a springboard for the reconsideration of music as art, hoping the approach will help restore it to a place alongside great visual works’, not to mention earn some cash as well, and also ‘create a shift in the music business‘. This release will be a separate one from their reunion album, A Better Tomorrow, which is set for release this summer.

“We’re about to sell an album like nobody else sold it before. We’re about to put out a piece of art like nobody else has done in the history of [modern] music.  We’re making a single-sale collector’s item. This is like somebody having the scepter of an Egyptian king.” – RZA

So, for the supposed ‘tour’ of this album through various exhibits, just like a high-profile one.. this tour (or exhibit) will come at a price to attend. According to Cilvaringz (the producer of the project), the exhibit fee will be more in the $30-50 range. People who will likely attend will have to go through heavy security to make sure that recording devices aren’t being smuggled in; so they’ll have to listen to the 31-track album through headphones, because ‘one leak of this thing nullifies the entire concept’.  Once the tour is over, the album will go on sale ‘in the millions’, and various brands will be able to purchase it; sounds like something similar to how JAY Z / Samsung did it.

“The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years, and yet its doesn’t receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value of what it is, especially nowadays when it’s been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free.” – RZA

For more details, read here, and here.