Suggesting that there’s really nothing you can’t achieve in America if you set your mind to it—and don’t mind becoming an internationally reviled prison inmate in the process—“pharma bro” Martin Shkreli has successfully gotten a member of the Wu-Tang Clan to rap his name in a song. Specifically, the group’s new track, “Lesson Learn’d,” contains a verse in which Inspectah Deck raps, “My price hikin’ like the pills Martin Shkreli sell,” giving Shkreli yet another dose of something that might look like validation if you don’t examine it for very long.
Shkreli inserted himself into the band’s mythology back in 2015, when he purchased Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, the group’s limited edition, $2 million collector’s album. (Despite the fact that several members of the musical collective discount the idea that Shaolin counts as an official Wu-Tang Clan release at all.) He then proceeded to treat RZA and his associates to his usual pigtails-pulling version of playfulness, playing the album after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, and later attempting to sell it while denigrating the band.
Well, congratulations, Martin: You won again, for a very specific definition of “winning” that includes losing your probation for pulling a similar breed of trolling on Hillary Clinton. Please enjoy your verse, one that’s going to make staggeringly little sense when anybody listen to “Lesson Learn’d” even two years from now, when “Big Rolls” Shkreli is just a fading bruise on the public consciousness.