Did Pharma Bro Actually Do Something Respectable?

By Sly SanchoNovember 11, 2016AB's Top Music News
wu-tang
By Sly Sancho | November 11, 2016

Pharma-bro, a.k.a. Martin Shkreli, made headlines in 2014 when he raised the prices of Daraprim, a drug used to treat HIV, from $13.50 to $750 per pill and his unapolgetic tone in response generally made him one of the most despised people of the year. It didn’t help much that his Twitter posts made him seem like a d-bag as he mimicked the pose of Flo Rida who was on a music video behind him.

His sure handed and seemingly arrogant tone in front of Congress didn’t help matters either, even if he was defending a likely immoral approach by Big Pharma to buying and then price gouging the cost old drugs that had been around for years.

(And by likely, we really mean, realistically, but are tempering our words).

Nor did it help matters that he was seemingly flaunting his wealth at every opportunity for a chance to extend his fifteen minutes of fame as he continued to try and talk down to others about money, their lack of understanding, and finally, how he offered to be Kanye West’s Life of Pablo for millions provided it was an exclusive after buying the sole copy of Wu-Tang’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” for $2 million.

The former of which may not have been the worst thing for the world to miss out on as numerous people were forced to sign up for a music streaming service they wouldn’t have needed otherwise only to find out his exclusive launch there ended up becoming…well, not exclusive.

Enter a couple weeks ago before the election that broke over half of voters’ hearts as they ended up seeing Drumpf winning and Pharma Bro was back in headlines again, having promised that if Drumpf won, he’d release his previously unreleased catalog of music, which included Nirvana, the Beatles, The Ramones, and, of course, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

Well, it seems like he’s at least made good on part of it….

Having released pieces of three tracks, there’s still another 28 to go, and more specifically their full length versions hopefully.

But, of course, that all depends on Shkreli who apparently is open to the idea, but has fallen back on a clause in the contract during the purchase that he’s not able to share the music for 88 years.

However, the clause was also only added in so far as the album couldn’t be shared for commercialization, meaning that it could feasibly be made public for free. Granted, in doing so, Shkreli would seemingly be decreasing the value of his $2 million investment since there wouldn’t be any value in holding the copy anymore, but don’t tell Method Man or Ghostface Killah that… they’d obviously like to see it made public.