The decline in music sales over the last 15 years has had a huge impact on record companies and artists. For us listeners though, it’s been great. We can stream whole albums and listen to millions of tracks for free, we get treated to a constant selection of new music on Soundcloud, and get to enjoy the various other new ways music is now distributed by labels and artists hoping to squeeze at least a tiny bit of sales revenue from us. None of this was available in the old world, where we still actually purchased millions of records.
And then there’s the RZA and the rest of the Wu-Tang Clan; those aging Shaolin monks, desperate to keep the lights on in that old crumbling Wu Mansion. In a perfect world, the group that made such innovative music 20 years ago would return to innovative yet again, re-forming like Voltron to save the industry.
Instead, they’ve presented us with the prospect of a one-off, million-dollar album. Nice one guys. Well done for supporting the music revolution, where the listener is always meant to be king.
The entire concept of Once Upon A Time In Shaolin might not come across as quite so smug and conceited if it was being pitched by artists who are actually relevant. The Wu haven’t made a good album since Wu-Tang Forever, and that was poor in comparison to classic debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
In the midst of the hype surrounding the ‘secret’ album, the group dropped A Better Tomorrow, another lacklustre offering, which, unsurprisingly, failed to shift many units. If they can’t even put in the effort to make a commercially available album good, then why should we believe that Once Upon A Time In Shaolin will be anything other than Wu-by-the-numbers? At this point it’s probably damn near impossible for the group to make a good record. Complacency set in years ago, with even the most talented members happy to simply phone it in, probably literally (you didn’t think they record these things in the same room at the same time anymore, did you?).
Millions of dollars were offered up for the mythical album during the peak of it’s media coverage, and this week, as the album is about to go up for auction as a piece of ‘art’, news has arrived that if someone does manage to buy it, they would need to wait a quick 88 years until the copyright expires and copies can be made. Again, incredibly smug. It looked at one point as though the entire thing may have been a gimmick to promote A Better Tomorrow. But that has come and gone, while the secret album story continues to grow.
What RZA and the rest of the clan should do is liberate the album by giving it away for free. Time it nicely as a freebie in the run up to the release of a decent new Wu-Tang album, or maybe as a bonus edition. That way, the music gets to be heard, and no one has to spunk millions of dollars for it. That would be innovative.
UPDATE: For what its worth, Method Man agrees!