Wu Tang Clan Co-Founder Oliver ‘Power’ Grant Dead at 52; wu tang clan Collaborator Remembered
Oliver “Power” Grant, a close affiliate and early backer of the wu tang clan who executive-produced key records and built the group’s business ventures, has died at age 52. The collective confirmed his death with the message “Rest in power, Power, ” and a cause of death was not revealed.
Wu Tang Clan confirms death
The Wu Tang Clan posted “Rest in power, Power” on social media to confirm Grant’s passing. A hip-hop music site first confirmed his death and wrote that “Power helped build a global legacy rooted in independence, ownership, and culture. ” The cause of death remains unknown.
Tributes from Method Man, GZA
Fellow members offered immediate tributes. Method Man posted on Instagram, “Paradise my brother safe travels!” and added, “I am not okay. ” GZA wrote on Instagram that “Wu wouldn’t have come to fruition without Power, ” and called Grant’s loss “a profound loss to us all, ” offering “my deepest condolences to the fam. ” Raekwon shared a photo of the group with Grant, writing, “We been everywhere … now you everywhere, ” and “The most high is merciful love you. ”
Business ventures and Wu Wear
Grant helped finance the group’s earliest recordings, garnering funds to produce their debut single “Protect Ya Neck” and serving as executive producer on the group’s first album, 1993’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Two years later, Grant oversaw the launch of the Wu Wear clothing line, which he later ran as CEO. Under his stewardship the line was carried in department stores and opened four retail stores across the US, grossing US$25m annually at its peak. Grant later renamed the clothing line Wu-Tang Brand in 2008 and discontinued the original brand because it was being widely counterfeited; in 2017 he and RZA relaunched Wu Wear with Live Nation Merchandise.
Video game and acting roles
Grant produced the 1999 PlayStation video game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style, a fighting game that featured the collective’s members as playable characters and furthered the group’s lore. He also pursued occasional acting: his on-screen debut came in Hype Williams’ 1998 crime drama Belly; he appeared alongside Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr in the 1999 drama Black and White; and he had roles in the 2004 mob drama Coalition and the unreleased Wendy Williams biopic Queen of Media.
Early life, nickname and chess
Grant was born in 1973 in Jamaica and raised in New York’s Staten Island, where he grew up in the Park Hill projects. There he met members of the group and acquired the nickname “Power” over a game of chess. Reflecting on his career in a 2011 interview, Grant described his business forays as a “hard-knock life, ” saying, “Wu Wear was pretty much like our entry in the fashion biz, ” and adding, “But before I was in Wu Wear, I was making and marketing the first Wu records with RZA. Everything that we learned was hard-knock life … A lot of it was trial and error. There were no models. ”
Portrayal and final reflections
In the 2019-2023 Hulu series Wu-Tang: An American Saga, Grant was portrayed by Marcus Callender. Reflecting on their conversations, Callendar said in 2023: “The first conversation we ever had, we spoke for like three hours. It was a very surreal moment. He never gave me a pointer and said, ‘Do it like this, do it like that. ’ It was never like that. All he told me was stories. ”
Oliver “Power” Grant’s role as financier, executive producer and business architect was credited by peers as central to the group’s rise, and members and collaborators expressed grief and condolences after the collective confirmed his death.
