The Grouch is at his Los Angeles house taking a few nicely deserved days off—type of. With the second leg of the annual How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour beginning Thursday (December 11) on the Observatory in Santa Ana, California, there’s nonetheless quite a bit to do. As he tells AllHipHop, he’s been “wearing a lot of hats:” driver, merch supervisor and performer, to call a number of.

But at this level, Grouch is nicely seasoned, having launched his music profession within the Nineteen Nineties. He’s gone on dozens of excursions, carried out at numerous venues and traveled around the globe along with his Living Legends brethren—solely this time, there’s one lacking.

In August 2025, Derrick McElroy, higher often called Aesop the Black Wolf or just Aesop, died all of the sudden, leaving the remainder of the Living Legends—Luckyiam, The Grouch, Eligh, Bicasso, Sunspot Jonz and Scarub—in shambles. Just 50 years previous on the time of his dying, Aesop wasn’t purported to go and the tight knit Hip-Hop collective was not at all able to say goodbye.

Despite the huge, soul-crushing loss, the Living Legends have soldiered on, honoring Aesop each probability they get, whether or not it’s with tribute t-shirts, images, video montages throughout concert events, social media or his verses. But every present is a problem in its personal approach.

“Now that Aesop’s not here, I got to take out his verse or add it, and it’s just been a lot for me,” Grouch explains. “But it’s what I signed up for.”

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That’s the straightforward half. Living Legends performed with Atmosphere, Hieroglyphics, Dilated Peoples, Immortal Technique and CunninLynguists on the historic Red Rocks Amphitheater in September, mere weeks after Aesop’s dying. The air was heavy with grief although there was a way he was there in spirit. That continues to occur from time to time however, after all, a Living Legends present won’t ever be the identical.

“We got a tribute part to him in the show,” he says. “But just being on stage and him not being there that’s an obvious thing. We’re missing a person that’s been with us for 30 years. Even staying at some of the hotels we’ve stayed at or being in some of the cities—all these different triggers that can spark a memory of him are just hitting right and left. Sometimes I just block it out, and sometimes it’s just deep and I’m like, ‘Whoa, he’s really not here.’ I just miss his spirit. I miss his laugh.”

Still, with out Aesop—who had an enormous, colourful persona and really cared concerning the folks in his life—the vibe has shifted.

“We include his verses on some of the songs, but it’s obviously not the same,” Grouch provides. “Part of me feels like, ‘Oh, he’s on stage with us.’ There’s moments where something will happen and I’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, like he’s here.’ I love that but, it’s a big void.”

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Thankfully, Grouch has his fellow Legends to lean on. For this 12 months’s iteration of How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour, he’s enlisted Souls of Mischief and CunninLynguists to spherical out the invoice. They, too, have confirmed to be good assist methods. Some of their friendships, in truth, stretch again a long time.

“I always try to get a creative lineup,” he says. “A lot of years I tried to do a younger artist and an older artist. I’ve tried a couple things and this time we were just like, ‘Let’s keep it a golden era, underground hip-hop lineup. The Souls of Mischief thing is really huge because I went to high school and even junior high with a couple of the guys.”

In some ways, The Grouch exists due to them. He explains, “They were in a grade higher than me and they were cooler than me, so I didn’t really know them. But I was inspired by them in real life, watching them on Yo! MTV Raps, seeing them sign to Jive Records and have their initial success. I was super inspired. It gave me a feeling that if these guys from my hometown and my actual school can do it, then maybe I can do it, too.”

He provides, “The power of them creating, what I believe is, one of the best Hip-Hop songs of all time,’93 to Infinity,’ those guys are Hip-Hop royalty. To have them on the same stage as us in 2025 is a beautiful blessing.”

Living Legends’ newest album, The Return, was launched in 2023. The How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour wraps up December 20 in Salt Lake City. Find a listing of tour dates above.

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