I… don’t know how to feel about this piece. And as a writer, I have been trained to not bring my personal opinions (or curse) into the articles I write about. However, I’m making an exception this time.
For the most part, I truly don’t care about what other people do with the money they’ve earned, legally or otherwise, because at the day’s end it’s their money and they can decide what they want to do with it. However… can we keep this guy Martin Shkreli several thousand light years away from hip hop culture, please?
For those unaware, Shkreli is the – and I’m putting this nicely – monumental scumbag who, after purchasing the drug Daraprim (a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection for people with AIDS and cancer), raised the price per tablet from $13.50 to $750. Because nothing says capitalism like making a pill completely unaffordable for those in need. I won’t get into my sentiments about that, as he’s already drawn similar ire of everyone from Bernie Sanders to a random doctor on Reddit. But in case you somehow don’t think that his sense of capitalism doesn’t qualify as “douchebag” material, the guy is also the owner of the much-ballyhooed one-of-one album from the Wu-Tang Clan, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, after plunking down a reported $2 million for it. His reason? Well, according to a Bloomberg report…
Shkreli, who describes himself as a bit of a recluse, recalls Gilkes telling him that if he bought the record, he would have the opportunity to rub shoulders with celebrities and rappers who would want to hear it.
A rich, smarmy dingleberry bought a once-in-a-lifetime piece of music just so he can hang out with Diddy and, like, Will Ferrell or something. Seems legit! Is it really a shocker that, after finding out what kind of reprehensible excuse of an Alabama Hot Pocket (look it up) the guy is, the RZA has said that he gave most of the money from Shkreli away to charity?
Nonetheless the guy spoke to my old stomping grounds, Hip Hop DX, and divulged that he wants to be the one who bails out incarcerated scarface Bobby Shmurda. In his “interview” – which makes him come across as the narcissistic, excrement-spewing douche-monkey he truly is – Shkreli, who claims he’s some hip hop fan who used to want to be a rapper himself (shocker!), says that he is actually in the process of trying to bail out Shmurda, and if he succeeds in doing so that “the guy’s going to have to record for me if he comes out. I’ll just come out and say it… I’m not going to do this for free.”
So, basically, he wants to own Bobby Shmurda. And here I thought slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment…
The piece itself is filled with Martin at his debased best. He levies insults at the RZA, claims that he felt “hurt” by the now-done (and forever hilarious) rift between Action Bronson and Ghostface Killah and wanted to do something about it, bragged about threatening a father of three, and the like, and closed things out with what he wants to do with the Wu-Tang album when asked about the possibilities of sharing it to the world one day…
“I’m not going to play it for no reason. If Taylor Swift wants to come over and s*ck my d*ck, I’ll play it for her.”
Listen, I know Bobby and his family are possibly reaching the levels of seemingly helpless desperation that comes with having a loved one locked up in jail for so long, but if he and his family have sense then they should kindly tell Martin Shkreli to, well, go f*ck himself. He, or hip hop culture for that matter, doesn’t want or need his ilk and – more importantly – his money mucking up things. I’m not even a Taylor Swift fan but that last comment was extremely unwarranted, insulting and discomforting for women in general, and that’s the type of guy you’d want to owe a favor to? I’d rather get rabbit punched by a hopped-up-on-steroids version of WBC world heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder while he’s wearing adamantium-dipped boxing gloves, than to even be in the same room as Shkreli much less be indebted to him. There are other ways to deal with things, Bobby, and he is not one of them.
