’Twas two nights before the end of the How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour and five members of the Living Legends—Sunspot Jonz, Eligh, The Grouch, Luckyiam, Bicaso and Scarub—were at Denver’s Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom for another headlining show with Souls of Mischief and CunninLynguists.
Behind the venue in a dimly lit Mile High alley, Sunspot Jonz practically glowed as he talked about his new children’s book, Werewolves Want the Moon For Christmas, and his latest solo album, Wolfheart. But there was also a sense of sadness in the wake of Aesop the Black Wolf’s death just a few months ago.
The veteran Oakland MC/producer, a founding member of the crew, grieved open and honestly with his Instagram followers, allowing the public to share in his pain. That night was no different—he was willing to speak on the group’s profound loss.
“You always find out bad news in the morning,” he said. “That morning, Murs called me and said, ‘Yo, we lost ‘Sop.’ Tears just started streaming down my face. I couldn’t even move. He’s the first one out of the group to go and he was such a light, because he’s always laughing no matter what’s happening. A piece of the whole mantle is gone now. You’re not prepared for it. I was paralyzed. I was catatonic. I was like, ‘I cannot believe it.’ I immediately called his phone.”
But…Aesop never picked up. So like a lot of creatives, he poured his grief into his art, something perfectly encapsulated on the Wolfheart song “Howl Miss You.”
“It’s wolf season and I knew I had to have the strength to make it through the winter, and only a wolf heart can do it,” he explained. “I made that beat on my MPC and I was like, ‘This sounds like the beat I’m gonna say something about Aesop on.
“I didn’t wanna make it overly deep, I just wanted to let people know I love the man, he was my brother and we had a lot of fun together. We also created magic and I wanted people to know how much I cared about him and that I’m always gonna howl for him. I’m always gonna be a beacon of his light that he left.”
Sunspot is spreading that light to children with Werewolves Want the Moon For Christmas, which he authored and illustrated. As a kid, Sunspot jumped around from foster home to foster home, and art was how he coped.
“I grew up in foster homes,” Sunspot revealed. “I was adopted and always on punishment or always in another foster home. I was in foster homes until I was about 15, because me and my new mom didn’t get along. She had divorced my adopted dad a year after I got adopted, so I was on punishment a lot, and I was always drawing. I had no TV, so I made the TV.”
Years after launching his rap career, he was sitting on the tarmac at a Miami airport for hours and, to pass the time, pulled out his computer and started drawing what would become illustrations for his first book, The Dentist and the Fire Breathing Dragon. It took years to publish it, but it finally arrived in 2021 and his career as an author and illustrator had officially begun.
“These drawings are in my control,” he said. “I don’t have to have someone direct it, or sound off on it or anything. I just put my all into making The Dentist and the Fire Breathing Dragon. It took me probably like two and a half years to really to finish it.”
The feedback blew him away: “I couldn’t even imagine it. It got hella positive reviews on Amazon.”
Sunspot’s books go hand in hand with his non-profit, Hip Hop Scholastics, whose mission it is to “promote social-emotional well being and inspire learning through love, inclusion and Hip Hop,” according to its website. Hip Hop Scholastics has provided Hip Hop Education for schools and programs nationwide since inception. The original curriculum, created for kindergarten students at Prescott Elementary School in West Oakland, has bloomed into a comprehensive Pre-K through 5th grade standards-based curriculum. The song “8th Graders” on Wolfheart—which he also produced—is actually about that.
“Basically we go and help the community by using music as a vocational tool,” he said. “We throw an annual event at Children’s Fairyland amusement park in Oakland. We have the fourth one coming up next August.” But he has additional plans. He continued, “I want to do a children’s network because I feel like kids, especially adopted or foster kids, they need help when it comes to being mentored.”
Somewhere, Aesop is smiling.
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