Oliver Power Grant: The Wu-Tang Way
Photography by Jesse Lizotte
Words by Karen Leong
Aug. 11, 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. In honour of the legacy and influence of this now global culture, A-M Journal spoke to the co-founder of the most influential hip hop groups of all time.
Oliver ‘Power’ Grant believes branding is musical. For decades, the name Wu-Tang Clan has defined America’s contemporary hip-hop experience. As a co-founder and executive producer able to seamlessly shift from music to apparel, Grant always placed culture at the heart of his mission to evolve Wu-Tang from a household name to the epitome of street style. The nature of his business is, and always has been, for the people. Dopeness – and making people feel good – is the domain in which he operates and imag- ines leaving behind as his legacy.
While Grant’s work with Wu-Tang started with the music, his interests drifted off to the side as the landscape of contemporary rap and hip-hop evolved in tandem with social media. “Instagram and Twitter [now X] make the world a smaller place... Hip-hop is a young person’s game. The music may last forever, but the hope is that Wu-Tang will always be rock-and- rolling,” says Grant.
“The hope is that Wu-Tang will always be rock-and- rolling”
Representation is at the core of his product-development ethos, with Grant’s line of work tethered to the fundamentality of fashion to place and connection. The diffusion didn’t happen overnight – Grant recalls how he had to prove time and again that he was ready to forge a new arm of the Clan away from its roots. He took business seriously, which meant diving headfirst into uncharted regions when the menswear market had not yet been exposed to Wu Wear’s iconic blend of street style and artist merchandise.
That Wu-Tang Clan was one of the first-evers to launch artist wear is not lost on Grant: “Every self-respecting artist now has an extension of themselves. I want to say that we pioneered that. Eight rappers and a logo – we kept it fresh.”
The Wu-Tang logo speaks directly to the ephemeral nature of a legacy name; the stylised caricature of the Wudang sword carved into the twisting, graphic ‘W’ of the yellow insignia is a family crest for the hip-hop collective, and all those who have felt a commonality with their music. With the bulk of their fanbase being a mature demographic, Grant is enthusiastic about the possibility of reconnecting younger generations with the familiar logo by having it emblazoned on skateboards, college varsity jackets and graphic posters, along with the Wu Wear’s usual range of streetwear apparel.
Grant’s energy and expansive outlook for the future is bolstered by his business acumen. During our chat, he tells me Taylor Swift is a whiz, a marketing maestro, and that he hawkishly watches her concert-merch stratagem. For Wu Wear, digital reach, locational drops and collaborations with titans such as Nike and LRG are all in the making.
Well aware that it’s easy for people to access a shirt with the ‘W’ logo on it, Grant knows it’s the experience that must remain at the forefront, which, for many in conglomerate markets, is notoriously easier said than done. The Wu-Tang experience has always been about levelling up to cultural nuances. Staying true to his core business tenets, when Grant organised a Wu Wear drop exclusive to the Australian market, he consulted with First Nations advisors on the product design.
Past, present and future: At its inception, Wu-Tang Clan was predated by Shaolin martial arts and the kung fu mythology that peppered much of American pop culture in the 1990s. The name, reworked into a new soundboard of Staten Island-affiliated talent, became synonymous with a legacy of hip-hop still laden with influence and reinforced by the connected social experiences of discrimination, power and inequality.
To paraphrase Grant, marinating in the iconic status of the Wu-Tang name would be a complicit disservice – one has to be around, pushing the ideas into the future. The Wu-Tang way welcomes the future with heady abandon, ensuring the past will always be a part of the present.