PleasrDAO Releases Secret Wu-Tang Album | Leighton Cusack & Matt Metkov

Welcome to Bankless, where we explored the frontier of cultural artifacts with deep mainstream lore being tokenized on Ethereum. Ethereum enables the future of ownership, and the music industry has slowly been losing the concept of user-owned music ever since the rise of digitization and the internet.

Today on Bankless, we explore a story that began in 2014 with the Wu Tang clan. And that same story which continues to this day with the tokenization of a real-world artifact on Ethereum, which is positioned to become the most owned but least listened to piece of music ever created. Bankless Nation, the Wu Tang clan formed in Staten Island, New York in the early 1990s, and is considered one of the greatest rap groups of all time, whose influence upon the world extends far beyond the music that they created. The Wu-Tang clan is known for their raw, gritty sound and the lyrical diversity from their 10 different members, who also had their own independent careers on their own.

The Wu-Tang clan grew in popularity along the rise of the increasing digitization, commoditization, and marginalization of music as an artistic form factor. Music as an art, and unlike other forms of art that are out there, truly suffered from the rise of digitization and the growth of the internet. Artists would pour their heart and soul into creating their music, and then it could be copied relentlessly, unstoppably, eliminating the ability for the work of musical artists to discover a true market value for their work. While Picasso's and Monet's would go for millions, musical artists became beholden to labels, streaming companies, streaming platforms, and endless touring, all because the digital form factor of their music was never able to achieve scarcity in the digital world. In response to the relentless digitization of music, the Wu-Tang clan recorded a secret album in 2014 and turned that album into a one-of-one CD, yes, a compact disc for all you zoomers out there, and placed legal restrictions on its replicability and its commercialization. No copy could be made, no commercial extraction could be placed, you could listen to it, but you couldn't broadcast it, and if you were to sell it, you would no longer have it. This one of one album was meant to be a protest against value being stripped out of music in the digital landscape. The decision was made to auction Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the name of this album, to the highest bidder, with a stipulation that it could not be commercially exploited for 88 years, ensuring its rarity and exclusivity.

This album was purchased by the infamous Martin Screlli, a pharmaceutical executive notorious for raising the price of a life saving drug, Daraprin, by over five thousand percent.

Much to the dismay of Riza and the rest of the Wu Tang clan, Martin won this auction for $2 million and became the owner of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. He reveled in the album's exclusivity, even taunting Wu Tang fans and the public by threatening to destroy it or keep it to himself indefinitely. It was rumored that he loved the idea of giving a quick death to what could have been a legendary story about a piece of art that was trying to revitalize the idea of the ownership of music. And he even went so far as to use the CD as a coaster on his desk to insult the art in itself. Skrelly has been called the most hated man in America, and he was convicted of securities fraud in 2016, and the United States government ordered him to forfeit $7.4 million in assets.

This forfeiture included the unique Wu Tang Clam album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

Because of Martin Skrelly's greed, the Wu Tang album was given a new opportunity to find an owner who could appreciate the cultural artifact for what it was and leverage its power for good rather than defaming the name of Wu Tang and teasing their diehard fans. In July of 2021, it was announced that the album had been sold to an anonymous buyer in order to satisfy the forfeiture judgment against Skrelly. The buyer was later revealed to be a collective known as Pleaser DAO, a decentralized, autonomous organization known for purchasing high value digital and physical art pieces.

So, enter Pleaser DAO, an online community of crypto enthusiasts and internet culturalists who ripped the album from the hands of Martin Skrelly and placed it into a community of over 100 DAO members intent on collecting parts of internet lore.

Jameis Johnson, the chief pleasing officer of Pleaser Dow, said, This ultimate protest against middleman and rent seekers of musicians and artists went south by going into the hands of Martin Scurley, the ultimate internet villain. Pleaser Dow wants this to be us bringing it back to the people. We want fans to participate in this album at some level.

Jameis described the purchase as appealing to PleaserDow's interest in acquiring signature items of digital culture, as well as a wider mission that it shares with many cryptocurrency champions, prying artistic creations from an exploitative, antiquated economic system, and offering the promise of a fairer one.

And Bankless Nation, that is where we find ourselves today.

On this decade long story arc of the 2014 one of one album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.

But that is not the end of the story. Hopefully, that was just a prelude. And you, Bankless Nation, in the fashion of Web3, have the opportunity to be a part of the future of this artifact that has immense significance to many in the outside world, not just for the fans of Wu Tang.

But for the entire music industry as well. Bankless Nation, believe me when I say that the entire music industry is watching this story that you just heard unfold, as Once Upon a Time Insolin takes its next step into the world of Web3 and digital ownership as a token on Ethereum.

And with that preamble, I'm going to hand things off to Leighton Cusack and Matt Markov. Bankless Nation, I'm here with Leighton Cusack here to my left and Matt Markov on the screen over in California. Layton, Matt, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you. Good to be here.

Layton and Matt, you uh guys are two leading members of uh Pleaser DAO, the organization that is tokenizing an album that is

uh was not that was created before the word tokenizing was even a thing. Uh there's a bunch of backstory, there's a bunch of lore that the Bankless Nation will have just listened to going into this episode. So we're kind of entering into the middle of the story. But I want to start with why this album? Why what's special about this album that makes it a perfect fit to bring something that is real, a physical CD, into the digital online economy on Ethereum? What why why does it why is this a perfect album? Layton, I'll start with you.

Yeah, well, um the history of this album is that 10 years ago in 2014, it was released as a one-of-one um album. One of the first, or certainly the most famous, if not the first, one-of-one album ever created. So there's only one physical copy that exists. And the reason why this makes so much sense and why this is important to understand is because it wasn't just done that way for novelty purposes. It was done that way as a protest against the devaluation of music in a digital world. Basically, the creators of this, the Wu-Tang clan and the co-producer Silver Rings.

We're very frustrated with how in a digital world there's no ownership.

And in a digital world with no ownership, no one values music. No one pays artists, music, musicians are not rewarded at all. And so everyone just wants to listen to music for free, and no one wants to actually pay artists. And their response to that was to say okay, if you're going to cut the artists out and not value their work and not pay for their work, then we're gonna make a one of one and only let one person listen to it.

Which is how this whole saga kicked off in 2014 and it's been a crazy it's only things have only gotten crazier since.

Matt, what was your add to that?

Yeah, I mean, I would just say that this this album is unique and is a one of one, but more than that, it's an album that is easily viewed as a fine work of art.

Yeah.

And the the question here is what has value? And I think what

resists all from the beginning was this juxtaposition between hey,

I can go spend $50 million on this Monet, and why is it that this work of art that comes from the exact same place that's arguably just as culturally significant is it?

And so for me it it all starts with the ability for this piece to be a representation

on chain and off chain of value.

We in the in the crypto industry, I think many of us became familiar with crypto thanks to the NFT movement of 2021, which uh made a lot of promises and made a had a lot of uh awareness, brought a lot of awareness of crypto, made a lot of promises, especially in the world of art, uh online art, the digitization of art, like artists one of ones. And one of the promises that the crypto industry made was new monetization models for artists, specifically through NFTs. Now we made a lot of promises. We probably like wrote more checks than we could cash. Uh, but I think with this story that's that is being uh manifested here with the with the Wu Tang Clan album, we are actually showing a way in uh being uh leading with an example of like how this might be relevant to artists. Yeah. So is this just like a one off scenario? Is this kind of just a cool story that's happening? Or is this are we trying to make this, uh are we trying to carve a path here to show artists the way?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, uh in my opinion, we're trying to carve a path. Pleaser Dow is a

Digital physical collection, we're an exam. And so it's not a question of we're not Hayden, we're not Uniswap, we're not going to create the Rails for this, but we can point the right direction with the art. And so, yeah, absolutely. I think there's a case to be made for this being a way forward. And when you have builders like Leighton willing to lean in and actually pull it back from where things are and contemplate like how could this be useful? How could there be value accrual here? I think you kind of have the next step in what comes.

Yeah, I think the thing I would add is like

it's up to the people to decide at this point if this is a one-off or if this is the new model.

Mm-hmm.

Um, because right now there's been a lot of people over the past 10 years who have complained about not being able to hear this album.

And the work has now been done where anyone in the world can buy an encrypted edition of this album for one dollar and speed the release of this album. And so now the ball is really in the court of the people.

Right? Like, like that's the art here. And if the people

are willing to say, yes, music has value, and yes, this this one of a kind piece of artwork that the Wu Tang clan created

should be valued in the same way, at least at minimum, in the same way as like a painting by Monet, right? Like there's a bunch of paintings by Monet. There's only a few albums. There's only one one of one by the Wu Tang clan. Why would that not actually be even more valuable? And so I think whether or not this is a one off.

Art experiment or whether this is a replicatable model for artists to use digital distribution, that is ultimately what's going to be determined by how people interact with what's happening here. And if people want to engage with it, then yeah, I think that's gonna this is gonna get a lot of attention from a lot of artists who are gonna say, whoa, this concept of digital ownership actually means something to me and actually um helps solve the problem that the internet created. Because if you think about it, for at least for musicians, the internet's been terrible. Like the internet has been not good. Like they've all they've done, all that's done is cannibalized all their money. And so now we're saying, okay, maybe in a world with digital ownership on crypto rails, some of that balance can be restored between the artists and the value of their art.

I I'd like to go into that a little bit more. So this album was created in twenty fifteen.

Fourteen was when I was launched.

2014 was when it was launching. A one-of-one album, one of one before this idea of NFTs when one of ones on Ethereum were even a thing. And can we talk about like some of the pressures that inspired the Wu Tang clan to do this in the first place? We have Spotify streams coming out, we have the iTunes music story even before that. We have YouTube music. There's a lot of digital online platforms where people can go and listen to music these days that has really marginalized the ability for artists to become uh profitable as a result of their art. Can you say, and that that was in 2013, we've seen almost a decade year of maturation of that industry since then. So what why why is this like so ripe for the world of artists these days?

Yeah, I mean I think I think that's like an important thing you bring up because this whole narrative of of trying to bring value back to music specifically in art is not something we invented. It's a it's an it's a vision that we're trying to steward that was very much the Wu-Tang clan's vision from day one with this piece. And so you I think Riza has a great quote in one of the interviews he talks about where he's like people will spend $500 for a pair of headphones to listen to music, but they won't be willing to spend 99 cents for the songs that are coming through those headphones. And like, why is that?

And so um I think everything that they saw in 2013.

Or uh yeah, 2013 or 2014, sorry, I'm getting my own dates confused. 2014, when they first released this, all those trends have only accelerated, right? Like it's actually even worse for artists today than it was 10 years ago. Now, and that's not, and you that's why you see, I think, people in popular culture, James Blake, or there's a lot of artists talking about how streaming is so bad for them. Um, but what's different, what's different from 10 years ago

is that we now have this concept of digital ownership.

Mm hmm.

And is that a solution to this problem?

Well, we let's find out. I think that's what we're saying. But Matkov, yeah, I don't know if you have an answer to that question as well.

I mean, it's a nice,

it's a nice circular thing because the dig concept of digital ownership is certainly what started this problem.

Right? The tech world and

People that are kind of very similar to our own ecosystem now discovered that if they got an early copy, they could upload this onto parts of the web that were only accessible by certain others. And all of a sudden, you had every album ever

coming out.

I mean, just go back through the history of this and look at Eminem, look at others talking about like whatever was always going to come out two months before we could launch it. And so for full circle to be, hey, look, now there are technological rails where not just the launching can exist, but the tracking can exist, the understanding of the ownership, the royalty payment system. Um, that to me is is perfect. Um, I I think that.