{"id":2268,"date":"2016-02-04T07:17:01","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T07:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattralston.net\/?p=2268"},"modified":"2016-02-04T19:03:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T19:03:41","slug":"why-martin-shkreli-is-gangster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/politics\/why-martin-shkreli-is-gangster\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Martin Shkreli Is Gangster"},"content":{"rendered":"
Martin Shkreli is the cartoonishly evil capitalist\u00a0who started a business which bought licenses for drugs with expired patents, and famously raised the price of one from $13 a pill to $750 per pill, which allowed him the disposable income to do what is called #ballin’. While #ballin’ Shkreli bought an album recorded by\u00a0the Wu-Tang Clan of which they made only one copy to auction off to the highest bidder, which he was, for $2 million. This apparently angered several members of the Wu, yet it’s unclear who they expected to have $2 million in extra cash on hand. Clearly those kids in line at the sneaker store weren’t going to pool their bus money. These are the guys who always rapped about the purity of their music, and how they made it for the people. I’m not sure if the\u00a0move to auction off their album was really #keepin’itreal. It almost seems capitalistic.<\/p>\n
After he bought the album, Shkreli got into a social media feud with a few members of the Wu who apparently disapproved of his entire being, particularly Ghostface Killah. Shkreli dissed Ghostface, who\u00a0hit back with a fairly tame yet\u00a0dismissive video, calling out Shkreli for having a “Skeletor nose”, which he does. Shkreli then made a Youtube video<\/a> thoroughly dissing Ghostface, calling him old and washed up, and talking shit about his personal safety in the traditional what is assumed to be tongue-in-cheek hip hop fashion. Then he went on a popular NYC hip hop radio show named after an aggressively white emo 80’s movie called The Breakfast Club and proceeded to talk more shit to Ghostface, such as:<\/p>\n “If he was here right now, I\u2019d fuckin\u2019 smack him in the face.\u00a0I\u2019m from the streets.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While all outward appearances suggest otherwise, I’m going to make the case that Shkreli has possibly the highest\u00a0gangster credibility in America at this point. Here’s why:<\/p>\n It’s not fair to claim Shkreli isn’t gangster just because he doesn’t look\u00a0the part. He talks like he’s gangster, and that’s because in every sense of the word, outside of being sickly looking and not outwardly intimidating, he is. Sean Combs isn’t intimidating. Gangsters idolize status no matter the cost. I’m not a fan of capitalism, I’m not even a fan of gangsters. I don’t think songs about gang banging deserve more artistic respect because the subject is actually a gang banger. I don’t think gang banging is a cool activity. I wonder if the critics or general public would have responded well if Michael Jackson wrote an album about child molesting. But, you can’t have it both ways. Sign this asshole\u00a0to Def Jam.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Martin Shkreli is the cartoonishly evil capitalist\u00a0who started a business which bought licenses for drugs with expired patents, and famously raised the price of one from $13 a pill to $750 per pill, which allowed him the disposable income to do what is called #ballin’. While #ballin’ Shkreli bought an album recorded by\u00a0the Wu-Tang Clan …read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[946,945],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2268"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n