It’s been kind of a slow news week, and that’s always a signal for me to search the Internet to see if there’s anything new going on with America’s most entrepreneurial hip-hop artists, The Wu-Tang Clan. They almost never let me down, and they came through again this week.

In my most recent Wu-Tang Clan update, I mentioned the ongoing litigation between PleasrDAO, which acquired the only copy of The Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” from the DOJ a few years ago, and the album’s original owner, convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli. The gist of the lawsuit is that although Shkreli was prohibited from copying the one of a kind LP, he allegedly did, and PleasrDAO sued him.

In an apparent effort to throw sand in the gears of that lawsuit, Shkreli filed a motion to add RZA and Cilvaringz to the case. As this excerpt from Billboard’s article on the case notes, the judge wasn’t impressed with Shkreli’s effort:

Last fall, Shkreli made a surprise move: he said the case could not be resolved unless RZA and Cilvaringz were forced to participate in the case. He claimed they had “conflicting interests in the same property,” and that the case would need to wade into the original purchase agreement for Once Upon that he had inked with the musicians back in 2015.

But on Monday, Judge Chen said that claim was clearly “unpersuasive.” She said that nobody was seeking to deprive RZA and Cilvaringz of any rights, and that Shkreli’s attorneys were trying to “manufacture” such a situation with an argument that “cherry-picks” details: “Thus, the court finds that Shkreli has not met his burden of proving that Diggs and Azzougarh are necessary parties.”

You’d think that by now Martin Shkreli would have learned not to disrespect The Wu-Tang Clan (see 2nd blog). After all, they don’t say  “Earth spins, Wu wins” for nothing.

– John Jenkins