Oliver "Power" Grant never rapped a verse on a Wu-Tang Clan album, and his name still belongs on every one of them.
The man behind the curtain
Grant was born November 24, 1970. He died February 24, 2026, at 55, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was a close associate of Wu-Tang Clan from the group's earliest days in Staten Island, and he executive produced every Wu-Tang Clan album the group released. He also founded and ran Wu Wear, the clothing line and retail stores that turned the group's logo into a uniform worn far outside New York.
None of that put his face on a wall. Rappers get murals. Executive producers rarely do.
A new wall in an old neighborhood
Staten Island changed that. A new mural went up in the Wu-Tang Clan District in Park Hill, the Clifton neighborhood where the group came up, under the direction of Staten Island-born actor, producer, and artist Gano Grills. Gano painted it alongside Austin Sepulveda, John Echo, and Will Power, turning a stretch of the district into a tribute to a man who mostly worked away from the microphone.
Park Hill already had a monument
The new piece joins a district that already carried a landmark. A 100-foot mural with hand-painted portraits of all ten Wu-Tang Clan members, painted by Will Power, was made possible by the nonprofit Projectivity with backing from the local community. That wall is counted among the city's best hip-hop murals and pulls visitors to Park Hill on its own, well before Grant's tribute went up nearby.
Why Wu Wear mattered
Grant's business record explains why Staten Island wanted him on a wall of his own. Wu Wear did not just sell hoodies with a logo stitched on. It took a Staten Island rap crew's iconography and put it into stores across the country at a time when few hip-hop groups controlled their own merchandising. As executive producer, Grant also had a hand in shaping every studio album the group released, the kind of work that rarely gets a name attached to it outside liner notes.
The district keeps the story alive
Park Hill's murals now function as a walking history of Wu-Tang Clan, tracing the group from its earliest recordings through its business ventures to the loss of one of its founding architects. The Will Power monument covers the ten members who stood in front of the microphone. Grant's mural covers the man who made sure there was a business left standing behind them.
Grant died in February. Staten Island answered by putting him where the rest of the group already stood, in the neighborhood that built all of them.
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