The Grouch Reflects On Aesop’s Death As Living Legends Solider On With Christmas Tour

December 09, 2025

EXCLUSIVE: The West Coast Hip-Hop collective kicks off another leg of the How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour on December 11 in Santa Ana, California.

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“We include his verses on some of the songs, but it’s obviously not the same,” Grouch adds. “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.”

Thankfully, Grouch has his fellow Legends to lean on. For this year’s iteration of How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour, he’s enlisted Souls of Mischief and CunninLynguists to round out the bill. They, too, have proven to be good support systems. Some of their friendships, in fact, stretch back decades.

“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 many ways, The Grouch exists because of 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 adds, “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’ latest album, The Return, was released in 2023. The How the Grouch Stole Christmas Tour wraps up December 20 in Salt Lake City. Find a list of tour dates above.

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