The Wu-Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the very limited edition—like, one copy only—secret album that RZA envisioned as a touring museum piece, has proven divisive, even inside the Wu itself.

Here's RZA, one year ago in Forbes:

"The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years. And yet its doesn't receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value of what it is, especially nowadays when it's been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free."

And here's Method Man, this week in XXL, after finding out the album's eventual buyer will have to wait 88 years to release it to the public:

"What do you mean 88 years? Fuck that album. I'm tired of this shit and I know everybody else is tired of it, too. Fuck that album, if that's what they are doing. I haven't heard anything like that, but if they're doing crap like that, fuck that album. Straight up. I'm just keeping it 100. When music can't be music and y'all turning it into something else, fuck that. Give it to the people, if they want to hear the shit, let them have it. Give it away free. I don't give a fuck; that ain't making nobody rich or poor. Give the fucking music out. Stop playing with the public, man."

"I was cool with shit. But now, this is ridiculous," Meth added.

Offers for the only copy of the album, which is locked inside a silver box, have reportedly reached $5 million, and fans—excuse me, art connoisseurs—are expected to pay $30-$50 to listen to it at a gallery.

"The main theme is music being accepted and respected as art and being treated as such," RZA has said. "If something is rare, it's rare. You cannot get another."

Nah, the main theme is the same as it's always been: Cash rules everything.

[h/t NME, Photo: Getty Images]