Oliver Grant, a Business Architect of the Wu-Tang Clan, Dies

Oliver Grant, an executive producer of Wu-Tang Clan since the group’s founding and the creator of its fashion line, Wu Wear, has died.

His death was confirmed on Wednesday by the group on Instagram, which referred to him by his nickname, Power. “Rest in Power, Power,” the group’s message read. No other details were provided, including his age and cause of death.

“We couldn’t have done it without him,” GZA, the rapper and Wu-Tang Clan member, wrote on social media. “Wu wouldn’t have come to fruition without Power. His passing is a profound loss to us all.”

Wu-Tang Clan, a New York rap collective with deep roots in Staten Island, revolutionized the music industry in the 1990s with a pioneering model that supported its members while also allowing them to sign individual deals and create their own record labels.

Mr. Grant wasn’t a performing member of Wu-Tang Clan, which included RZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Method Man, Ghostface Killah and others. But he played a central role in its rise to fame, providing much of the initial funding for the group along with his childhood friend, Mitchell “Divine” Diggs, the brother of the rapper RZA, Robert Diggs.

Mr. Grant was an executive producer for some of the group’s records, including the debut album, “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).”

He was also a driving force behind the expansion of its business empire, including the creation of its fashion line, Wu Wear. The line was an early blueprint for an artist-driven lifestyle brand, and at its height had several storefronts across the country, in Virginia, Georgia, New York and California.

In the 2019 documentary about the group, “Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men,” the rapper Lamont “U-God” Hawkins described Mr. Grant this way: “Power is a stone-cold hustling machine,” he said.

Wu-Tang Clan’s approach to the music industry was informed by a bad experience RZA had around 1990, when an early recording contract went badly. In a 2011 interview, Mr. Grant spoke about the group’s initial negotiations with record labels.

“We were from Staten Island. We were high school dropouts, convicted felons,” Mr. Grant said. “We’d been through things, and we were competing with dudes who came and make it with college degrees in marketing.”

“We came and we rewrote another model,” he said. “The end game was for everybody to be happy, not just the record company and not just us.”

The group initially signed with Loud Records, an independent company distributed by RCA, in a groundbreaking deal in which the group would receive a smaller advance but would retain creative control and the ability for its members to sign solo record deals elsewhere.

In the initial years after the deal, the group pooled resources to support other members of the collective, Mr. Grant said.

“It was part of our core and movement for us to spread the money around and help brothers eat, without a project out,” he said. “It was like we were trust fund babies.”

In 1995, Mr. Grant helped create the Wu Wear brand, featuring the group’s birdlike “W” logo. It began as a mail-order business, with an advertisement in the back of a Raekwon album. It was born out of Mr. Grant’s desire to expand the group’s reach beyond music, he told the entertainment website Complex in 2011.

Mr. Grant said that the brand came out of his “playing around with just fitting the guys for videos” and “always being a kid that was into fashion.”

“It just made me want to try to expand out and make another avenue for what we was doing,” he said.

In addition to his work with Wu-Tang Clan, Mr. Grant was also an actor, appearing in the 1998 crime drama “Belly,” the 2004 romantic thriller “When Will I Be Loved” and the 2017 psychological thriller “An Imperfect Murder,” among others.

A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Grant often spoke about Wu-Tang Clan as a “brotherhood,” one that was less about money and more about friendship.

“There’s no schooling, so the value comes from learning life lessons,” he said in 2011. “Every day you can learn lessons if you tune in.”

Kitty Bennett provided research. Remy Tumin contributed reporting.