LLOYD: We try to keep it as open as possible. I thought that was pretty funny.ĬNN Geek Out: Do you strive to pair up real and fictional figures? Oh I never thought of that! Thank you, 12-year-old kid in Montana!Īnd people get confused sometimes as to what makes a figure historical. We wonder who could battle Clint Eastwood, and we see a suggestion in the comments. We have to keep making these and want to keep challenging ourselves. I can’t put my finger on why we get so many requests, but I think they genuinely feel that they’re part of the creative process, which is true. Peter: We get about 200,000 comments on a rap battle. Adolf Hitler, our first runaway hit, really came from the audience.ĬNN Geek Out: What’s been your weirdest request? That set the tone as it being anyone throughout history, as long as they have something to argue about. It was the audience who suggested John Lennon versus Bill O’Reilly.
Peter: Especially with the early ones – we formed this whole thing with the audience. It was sort of the best of both worlds, taking what is already awesome about battle rapping and then heightening it with an added context.
We thought that the beefs between classic characters would be really funny to hear because you could represent both sides and really dig into an actual point of view that has had some impact on history. While battling is confrontational, most times the people battling are doing so just for the sake of the rapping or the show. Battle rap is something that is inherently engaging and funny because it’s based on punch lines about the other person. Here is more of CNN Geek Out’s interview with the pair.ĬNN Geek Out: What is it that was inherently funny or intriguing to you when you first thought of historical rap battles?ĮpicLLOYD: We’ve always liked rap and free-styling. “We free-styled one in my bedroom which was our studio at the time, and I thought this could be a really cool video,” said Peter. The idea for the videos happened when Peter, who had found himself with a growing audience on YouTube, and LLOYD, who had been performing a rap show, decided to combine their talents to have historical figures battle it out. In some cases, these kinds of exercises (not unlike Spike’s “Deadliest Warrior” series,) might also be seen as another way to look at, and get a sense of comfort about, world history. These videos are a peek into the epic good-and-evil dynamic that is explored in many favorite fan franchises, not to mention that they poke fun at historical figures, something history geeks enjoy. (Again, discretion is advised on these videos, as some may find the humor or language offensive). The rematch, with its homage to “Return of the Jedi” intro, already has more than 7 million views. Thus far, Nice Peter and “Epic Rap Battles’ ” YouTube accounts have a grand total of 360 million page views. (Warning: All these videos include strong language that might be offensive to some viewers). Nice Peter (Peter Alexis Shukoff) and EpicLLOYD (Lloyd Ahlquist) have been delivering these “Epic Rap Battles of History” for more than a year now on YouTube, and the start of their new “season” of rap battles sees a rematch between Vader and Hitler, the first of which received well over 45 million views. On YouTube, however, it has now happened twice. It’s not every day that you see actors portraying Darth Vader and Adolf Hitler battle it out, in rhyming form.
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