Oliver ‘Power’ Grant, Wu-Tang Clan’s fashion mogul, dead at 52
Oliver “Power” Grant, the shut Wu-Tang Clan affiliate who oversaw the group’s enormously common Wu Wear fashion line, has died. He was 52.
Grant’s demise was confirmed by social media posts from a number of Wu-Tang members together with Method Man, who wrote “Paradise my Brother safe Travels!!” below a put up of the 2 collectively.
“We couldn’t have done it without him,” GZA wrote in his own post. “Wu wouldn’t have come to fruition without Power. His passing is a profound loss to us all.”
The group members’ posts didn’t cite a reason for demise. The information was first reported by shops together with Okayplayer and Hot 97.
Grant, a childhood buddy of Wu-Tang co-founder RZA’s older brother, was a vital determine within the sprawling New York hip-hop collective’s ascent. Although he was not a performing member of the group, he helped increase capital for early recording periods and structured Wu-Tang’s funds and document offers — no small feat for a collective with such an unlimited archipelago of group and solo tasks.
“We knew that if a brother got a deal for 150k, he could keep the majority of it, but it would also facilitate and help the other brothers,” he informed Passion of the Weiss in 2011. “It was part of our core and movement for us to spread the money around and help brothers eat, without a project out. It was like we were trust fund babies.”
His work set a precedent for autonomy and artistic management as hip-hop turned a industrial juggernaut within the ’90s.
“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,” he mentioned. “I wasn’t a rapper, but the thrill of being a part of going and where they went, it was the inspiration for how it ended up that led us all to go back, soaking up what we’d absorbed and coming back with ‘Protect Ya Neck.'”
He was additionally the driving drive behind Wu Wear, the group’s wildly common fashion line that netted tens of tens of millions in income and have become a fixture of ’90s hip-hop iconography. The line was later revamped as Wu-Tang Brand, and relaunched as Wu Wear in 2017. He additionally had cameos as an actor alongside Method Man within the 1998 hip-hop traditional “Belly” and 1999’s “Black and White,” and served as an govt producer for the group’s many LPs.
This story initially appeared in Los Angeles Times.
