Shkreli angered humanity at large earlier this year when he greedily jacked up the price of his AIDS medication, but perhaps garnered even greater scorn when it was revealed he was the secret winning bidder for an ostentatiously priced, one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album. As RZA and gang laughed their way to the bank, the internet responded in kind with outrage, and untrue rumors about a Bill Murray heist. For his part, Shkreli basically said he hadn't even bothered to play the thing yet, then publicly invited Taylor Swift to come over to his creephole for a one-on-one listening/fellatio party. (Run, Taylor, run!)
So it remains unclear if Shkreli even likes Wu-Tang. What is certain is the bile-faced monster has a deep and abiding love for emo. To begin with, Shkreli was an investor in Collect Records, the record label founded by Geoff Rickly* of the band Thursday. (Ricky and Collect have since severed all relationships with this vile scab of a person.)
But a gander at Shkreli's publicly viewable Spotify profile reveals some intriguing playlists. "New Emo," clocking in at 39 songs, includes selections by relatively obscure bands like South Jersey's By Surprise and New Hampshire's Deer Leap, as well as the better known The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. Other playlists include cuts by Hopesfall, Pianos Become the Teeth, and lots of Thursday. The band Minus the Bear even gets its own dedicated playlist. Shkreli's Spotify profile also follows bands like Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, and Brand New, alongside Jay-Z and Katy Perry. (Run, Katy, run!)
I suppose the real question is, who are these 45 Spotify users who follow Shkreli? It's a pretty shabby look, I have to say.
*Poor Rickly. Another of his projects includes No Devotion, the band he formed with former members of the band Lostprophets, whose singer Ian Watkins literally raped babies. Okay, yeah, that is worse than anything Shkreli's done. (So far.)
