Wu-Tang members pay tribute to Grant with GZA saying 'His passing is a profound loss' and Method Man posting 'I am not okay'
Oliver "Power" Grant, a close affiliate and early backer of the hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan who had a hand in many of the group's albums and business ventures, has died aged 52.
The death was confirmed by Wu-Tang Clan. "Rest in power, Power," the collective wrote on social media. A cause of death was not revealed.
Wu-Tang Clan member Method Man shared his own tribute to his long-time collaborator. "Paradise my brother safe travels!" he said on Instagram. "I am not okay."
Fellow Wu-Tang rappers GZA and Raekwon also paid tribute to Grant on social media. "Wu wouldn't have come to fruition without Power," GZA wrote on Instagram. "His passing is a profound loss to us all. My deepest condolences to the fam."
Raekwon shared a photo of the group with Power. "We been everywhere ... now you everywhere," he wrote. "The most high is merciful love you."
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 the members of Wu-Tang Clan, who gave him the nickname "Power" over a game of chess.
Soon he became the group's backer, garnering the funds for them to produce their debut single Protect Ya Neck and executive producing their first album - 1993's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).
Two years later, Grant oversaw the launch of Wu Wear, Wu-Tang Clan's clothing line, which cemented the collective's influence in music and popular culture more broadly. With Grant as CEO, soon the line was carried in department stores, with the business opening four of its own retail stores across the US, grossing US$25m annually during its peak.
In 1999, Grant also produced the 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.
In a 2011 interview with the music blog Passion of the Weiss, Grant described his business forays as a "hard-knock life".
"Wu Wear was pretty much like our entry in the fashion biz," he said. "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."
In 2008, Grant renamed the clothing line Wu-Tang Brand and discontinued the original brand, which was being widely counterfeited - though later in 2017, Grant and RZA relaunched Wu Wear with Live Nation Merchandise.
Throughout his career, Grant also dipped into occasional acting roles, making his on-screen debut in Hype Williams' 1998 crime drama Belly. He also acted alongside Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr in the 1999 drama Black and White, set in the world of hip-hop, and had roles in the 2004 mob drama Coalition and the unreleased Wendy Williams biopic Queen of Media.