“It was an upsetting process,” Shukoff says of making “ Hillary Clinton vs. Four years later, it was an entirely different story. Chuck Norris” was an early hit), flying on a truly majestic Bald Eagle, rapping his verse before slapping the candidates, not out of malice, but to make them shape up and be leaders. The battle ends with Abraham Lincoln (Shukoff), one of ERB’s most popular characters (“Abraham Lincoln vs. Mitt Romney,” which starred Obama impersonator Iman Crosson and Ahlquist as the former Massachusetts governor. We didn’t know what it meant.”ĭuring the 2012 race, the show produced “Barack Obama vs. “We have a lot of different ethnicities and races and sexualities, and we were scared,” Shukoff says. presidential election in which Donald Trump won on a nationalistic platform shook the young, progressive talents at their core. Then, on top of the stress, the 2016 U.S. Stan Lee” are, to date, the most expensive in the show’s history). Then, burnout settled in, as more time and energy went into the show with some episodes costing as much as $25,000 to produce ( “Ghostbusters vs. Sky-high success followed, including ownership by Disney’s Maker Studios and A-list guest appearances by Snoop Dogg, Weird Al, T-Pain, and the comedic duo Keegan Michael-Key and Jordan Peele. The video currently has over 37 million views. Bill O’Reilly,” the very first battle, was directed by Dave McCary, who recently directed the critically-acclaimed indie drama Brigsby Bear. The four pooled their resources, including video cameras, a homemade green screen, and $250 for costume rentals, to make their first videos. So, in 2010, Ahlquist and Shukoff teamed up with Cimadamore and Sherwin to take their show to YouTube, which at the time was only beginning to emerge as a legit creative platform. After the Comic Con gig, they took another break, but Shukoff says the live tour was necessary, functioning as both a return to form and an effort to rediscover why the two made music in the first place.ĮRB began as an improv show in Los Angeles called Check OneTwo, which Ahlquist and Shukoff found their show’s concept difficult to pull off before an audience. It was a homecoming of sorts for Shukoff, who grew up in Rochester in western New York. King Blues Club during New York Comic Con in October. “It was always the number one thing: before families, before friends, before health.”Īfter ERB went hiatus in January, Shukoff and Ahlquist briefly parted ways, before reuniting in the spring for a live tour featuring the show’s hits, which culminated at the B.B. After six years of creating YouTube content - “feeding the machine,” he calls it - he was feeling burned out. “We both felt, Lloyd and I, it was time to take a real step back,” Shukoff says. What were ERB’s creators - Musician Peter Shukoff (“Nice Peter”), improv comic Lloyd Ahlquist (“EpicLLOYD”), musician Dante Cimadamore, and producer Zack Sherwin - up to, anyway?Īs Shukoff told Inverse in September, ERB is on an extended break, and there are no immediate plans to re-enter the studio. Today, months after their most intense and personal episode, fans are still waiting for a new song, a new season, for a new anything. The battle, which has been watched more than eight million times, ends with Shukoff and Ahlquist making peace before getting to work at their next song. “Don’t take this battle there dude, you don’t want that at all,” raps Ahlquist, “Let me guess, right now you’re on two beers and a pill and a half of Adderall?” EpicLLOYD II,” two of the show’s pioneering personalities drop the costumes and characters to play themselves, where they vent professional frustrations against each other for more than three minutes. The rap battle in that final video is also weird compared to the rest of their releases: In “Nice Peter vs. “Is this channel still alive?” reads a comment on the Season 5 finale, the most recent video released in January. Left without a proper goodbye, fans have been confused regarding the state of ERB. It’s also been eleven months, an eternity in internet years, since they last uploaded a video. With an audience of 14.2 million subscribers and over three billion views combined, Epic Rap Battles of History (“ERB”) is one of the most popular YouTube shows of all time. Created by four friends, the musical web series pits two or more figures from history - Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, Batman and Sherlock Holmes, Miley Cyrus and Joan of Arc - in a war of words where textbook footnotes and sophomoric humor are weaved over rhythmic, genre-defying beats. The internet was made for Epic Rap Battles of History.
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