Living Legends’ Sunspot Jonz Howls For Aesop On “Wolfheart” Album
’Twas two nights earlier than the top of the How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour and 5 members of the Living Legends—Sunspot Jonz, Eligh, The Grouch, Luckyiam, Bicaso and Scarub—had been at Denver’s Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom for an additional headlining present with Souls of Mischief and CunninLynguists.
Behind the venue in a dimly lit Mile High alley, Sunspot Jonz virtually glowed as he talked about his new kids’s e-book, Werewolves Want the Moon For Christmas, and his newest solo album, Wolfheart. But there was additionally a way of unhappiness within the wake of Aesop the Black Wolf’s loss of life only a few months in the past.
The veteran Oakland MC/producer, a founding member of the crew, grieved open and truthfully along with his Instagram followers, permitting the general public to share in his ache. That night time was no completely different—he was keen to talk on the group’s profound loss.
“You always find out bad news in the morning,” he stated. “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 by no means picked up. So like a whole lot of creatives, he poured his grief into his artwork, one thing completely encapsulated on the Wolfheart music “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 defined. “I made that beat on my MPC and I used to be like, ‘This sounds like the beat I’m gonna say one thing 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 mild to kids with Werewolves Want the Moon For Christmas, which he authored and illustrated. As a child, Sunspot jumped round from foster residence to foster residence, and artwork 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 profession, he was sitting on the tarmac at a Miami airport for hours and, to go the time, pulled out his pc and began drawing what would turn into illustrations for his first e-book, The Dentist and the Fire Breathing Dragon. It took years to publish it, nevertheless it lastly arrived in 2021 and his profession as an writer and illustrator had formally begun.
“These drawings are in my control,” he stated. “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 suggestions blew him away: “I couldn’t even imagine it. It got hella positive reviews on Amazon.”
Sunspot’s books go hand in hand along with his non-profit, hip hop Scholastics, whose mission it’s to “promote social-emotional well being and inspire learning through love, inclusion and hip hop,” in response to its web site. hip hop Scholastics has supplied hip hop Education for colleges and packages nationwide since inception. The authentic curriculum, created for kindergarten college students at Prescott Elementary School in West Oakland, has bloomed right into a complete Pre-Okay by way of fifth grade standards-based curriculum. The music “8th Graders” on Wolfheart—which he additionally produced—is definitely about that.
“Basically we go and help the community by using music as a vocational tool,” he stated. “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 extra 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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