Wu-Tang Clan Co-Founder, Style Entrepreneur Was 52

Oliver “Energy” Grant, an early and shut affiliate of the hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan who govt produced the group’s early recordings and headed the profitable Wu Put on vogue line, died Monday, February 23. He was 52.

His loss of life was introduced on social media by Wu-Tang Clan. A trigger and place of loss of life weren’t disclosed.

The information comes simply because the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame introduced right now that Wu-Tang Clan is a 2026 nominee for induction, although Grant, who was not a performing member of the group, was not listed on the Corridor’s nomination roster.

“Paradise my Brother secure travels!!,” wrote Wu-Tang’s Methodology Man on Instagram, including, “Bruh, I’m not okay.”

Wu-Tang members Raekwon and GZA additionally posted, with the previous writing, “Essentially the most excessive is merciful. I really like you,” and the latter noting, “Wu wouldn’t have come to fruition with out Energy. His passing is a profound loss to us all.”

Born November 3, 1973, in Jamaica, Grant grew up within the Park Hills Tasks of New York’s Staten Island, the place he befriended the boys who would develop into Wu-Tang Clan: RZA, Ghostface Killah, Methodology Man, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and Cappadonna.

Nicknamed “Energy” by different Wu-Tang members following a sport of chess, Grant reportedly made an early monetary funding within the group within the early ’90s, was listed as an govt producer of the group’s recordings and, maybe most importantly, based in 1995 the profitable clothes line Wu Put on, serving to to ascertain the visible id and model of each the group and hip-hop tradition at giant.

“Wu Put on was just about like our entry within the vogue biz,” Grant mentioned in a 2001 interview, “however earlier than I used to be in Wu Put on, I used to be making and advertising and marketing the primary Wu information with RZA. The whole lot that we discovered was hard-knock life. You work it out as you go alongside and take cues from these which are actively doing issues … A number of it was trial and error. There have been no fashions.”

In line with the 2019 Showtime documentary Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics And Males, Grant’s funding within the group was “accrued on the street,” resulting in his itemizing as an govt producer on Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album Enter the Wu-Tang: (36 Chambers). Energy, in response to the doc, helped launch Wu Put on clothes from a mail-order itemizing on the again of Raekwon’s Solely Constructed 4 Cuban Linx album. Grant was CEO of the enterprise, which might develop to a reported $25 million enterprise with clothes traces carried in such shops as Macy’s, Wealthy’s and d.e.m.o.

Grant renamed the enterprise Wu-Tang Model in 2008, discontinuing the unique line attributable to rampant counterfeiting, and in 2017 he and RZA teamed with Dwell Nation Merchandise to relaunch the basic line in 2017.

The brother of rapper and Wu-Tang affiliate Killa Sin (Jeryl Gant), Grant made his movie appearing debut within the 1998 crime drama Stomach, and the next yr appeared in author/director James Toback’s Black and White alongside different Wu Tang members in addition to Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Brooke Shields, Elijah Wooden and Mike Tyson. Different movie credit embody When Will I Be Cherished and Coalition (each 2004). In 2011, he performed the husband of speak present host Wendy Williams within the biopic Queen of Media starring Robin Givens.

Within the 2019-2023 Hulu sequence Wu-Tang: An American Saga, Grant was portrayed by Marcus Callender.

Data on survivors was not instantly obtainable.