Oliver “Power” Grant, an early and close associate of the hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan who executive produced the group’s early recordings and headed the successful Wu Wear fashion line, died Monday, February 23. He was 52.
His death was announced on social media by Wu-Tang Clan. A cause and place of death were not disclosed.
The news comes just as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced today that Wu-Tang Clan is a 2026 nominee for induction, though Grant, who was not a performing member of the group, was not listed on the Hall’s nomination roster.
“Paradise my Brother safe travels!!,” wrote Wu-Tang’s Method Man on Instagram, adding, “Bruh, I am not ok.”
Wu-Tang members Raekwon and GZA also posted, with the former writing, “The most high is merciful. I love you,” and the latter noting, “Wu wouldn’t have come to fruition without Power. His passing is a profound loss to us all.”
Born November 3, 1973, in Jamaica, Grant grew up in the Park Hills Projects of New York’s Staten Island, where he befriended the men who would become Wu-Tang Clan: RZA, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and Cappadonna.
Nicknamed “Power” by other Wu-Tang members following a game of chess, Grant reportedly made an early financial investment in the group in the early ’90s, was listed as an executive producer of the group’s recordings and, perhaps most significantly, founded in 1995 the lucrative clothing line Wu Wear, helping to establish the visual identity and brand of both the group and hip-hop culture at large.
“Wu Wear was pretty much like our entry in the fashion biz,” Grant said in a 2001 interview, “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. You figure it out as you go along and take cues from those that are actively doing things … A lot of it was trial and error. There were no models.”
According to the 2019 Showtime documentary Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics And Men, Grant’s investment in the group was “accrued in the street,” leading to his listing as an executive producer on Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album Enter the Wu-Tang: (36 Chambers). Power, according to the doc, helped launch Wu Wear clothing from a mail-order listing on the back of Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx album. Grant was CEO of the venture, which would grow to a reported $25 million business with clothing lines carried in such stores as Macy’s, Rich’s and d.e.m.o.
Grant renamed the venture Wu-Tang Brand in 2008, discontinuing the original line due to rampant counterfeiting, and in 2017 he and RZA teamed with Live Nation Merchandise to relaunch the classic line in 2017.
The brother of rapper and Wu-Tang affiliate Killa Sin (Jeryl Gant), Grant made his film acting debut in the 1998 crime drama Belly, and the following year appeared in writer/director James Toback’s Black and White alongside other Wu Tang members as well as Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Brooke Shields, Elijah Wood and Mike Tyson. Other film credits include When Will I Be Loved and Coalition (both 2004). In 2011, he played the husband of talk show host Wendy Williams in the biopic Queen of Media starring Robin Givens.
In the 2019-2023 Hulu series Wu-Tang: An American Saga, Grant was portrayed by Marcus Callender.
Information on survivors was not immediately available.