An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective: That Russian Five-Way

I dislike five-way battles.  I didn’t realize this until about halfway through season four, and I’m grateful they don’t do these kinds of battles very often.  This week, I thought I’d take a deeper look at the structure of the season two finale and analyze why I do not like this format of battle.

The battle starts out normal enough.  Rasputin and Stalin are introduced and each get a verse, Rasputin going first.  Typically, in these rap battles, whoever goes first has the advantage of dealing the first blow, but whoever goes last gets the advantage of dealing a killer final line.  Some of the better ones from season two include:

“You’re out, with three strikes and just one ball.” -Babe Ruth (against Lance Armstrong)

“I’m a champion of the world, extinguished in his prime.  So kiss my ass, Frankie!  (But you have to wait in line.)” -Freddie Mercury (against Frank Sinatra)

“And if the people knew you stopped me from making power free, they would curse the con Edison with every utility.” -Nikola Tesla (against Thomas Edison)

As such, it’s easier to think of whoever goes last as having won the battle, and whoever goes first needs to work extra hard to overcome that disadvantage.  But what happens when you don’t even know you’re going to be facing insults from more than one person?

For Rasputin’s verse, he both insults Stalin (“It’s a disgrace what you did to your own people.  Your daddy beat you like a dog and now you’re evil.”) and brags about himself (“Big dick mystic known to hypnotize”), pretty much the same as everyone else who participates in a rap battle.  At this point, neither of them know what’s coming so they have no reason to prepare themselves.

Stalin takes his turn and responds to Rasputin.  “Look into my eyes, you perverted witch.  See the soul of the man who made Mother Russia his bitch.”  He threatens to shoot everyone and everything who ever meant anything to Rasputin, and adds in a little bit of a brag of his own.  “I even crush mother fuckers when I’m laid in state.  Pride of Lenin took Trotsky out of the picture.”

Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that, though.  He calls himself the Pride of Lenin, but this clearly makes Vladimir Lenin turn in his grave because he suddenly jumps into the battle, angry at Stalin.  “I have no pride for you, who ruined everything my revolution was doing to stop the bourgeoisie!” he exclaims.

He has something to say to Rasputin, comparing him to Frankenstein’s monster… or maybe Dr. Frankenstein himself?  That’s one reference that can be a bit hard to call, since popular culture has misattributed the name Frankenstein to the doctor’s creation rather than to the doctor himself.  He also makes a reference to an affair Rasputin had, but most of his ire is for Stalin, calling him out for betrayal suffered during the Russian Revolution and for destroying all of Lenin’s work in overthrowing the government, finishing by calling it the greatest revolution since the birth of Karl Marx.

This isn’t the first surprise participant in the history of the Epic Rap Battles.  In Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney, both participants begin with a full verse and then as they continue to go back and forth, their lines get shorter until they resort to bickering like children.  Basically, they have opportunities to respond to each other until Abraham Lincoln jumps into the battle to criticize both of them.

Here, though, in the Russian Five-Way, Rasputin doesn’t get a chance to respond to Stalin’s remarks before Lenin shows up to put Stalin in his place.  If this turned into Rasputin getting another turn, Stalin getting another turn and Lenin finishing up the battle, it might not have been too bad, but then they hear a knocking… well, it’s just someone saying “knock knock knock knock” before Mikhail Gorbachev enters the battle saying “Did somebody say, birthmarks?”

No.  No one mentioned birthmarks, but whatever.  When Gorbachev arrives, he claims to be the host with the most Glasnost.  Although he has lines for the others, “Assholes made a mess and the war got cold,” “If your name end with ‘in’, time to get out!”, he talks more about himself than anything else and refers to his opponents collectively, only addressing them as individuals at the very end.  He brags about making deals with both Ronald Reagan and Ronald McDonald, claims responsibility for not retaliating against Mikhail Baryshnikov when the ballet dancer defected to Canada in 1974 – which if you think about it, deciding not to take action is the easiest thing to do, you just do nothing, so Gorbachev is bragging here that he is brave enough to do nothing! – and boasts that he’s the one who tore down the Berlin Wall.  He talks more about himself than his opponents, but at the end, he does tell Stalin and Lenin that they need to take yoga and Rasputin needs to take a shower and that they all need to learn how to handle real power.

“Did somebody say, real power?”  Vladimir Putin shows up and literally every line is about him.  This is potentially justified when he claims that his enemies don’t distract him, but still.  He spares no lines to criticize any of the Russians standing before him, instead boasting “I spit hot borscht when I’m crushing these beats.”  He brags about visiting Cuba, apparently a big deal since Russian leaders hadn’t been doing that since the end of the Cold War, and claims that knowing judo will help him defeat “every Communist сука”.  He acts especially proud that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned, someone who had been trying to expose the corruption in Russia’s Federal Security Service, corruption which unfortunately went from top to bottom.  In the end, Putin doesn’t spare a single line to attack anyone in particular in the assembled group of Russians despite claiming to be the best.

I feel sorry for Rasputin here, and for Stalin as well.  They show up, thinking they’re going to have a standard rap battle, only for it to be derailed by the increasingly crazy circus they find themselves in.  Not only that, but Rasputin doesn’t get a single opportunity to defend himself or redouble his efforts to attack Stalin.  Even in my least favourite rap battle of all time, Adam vs. Eve, Eve begins the battle attacking Adam, Adam defends himself and attacks back, then Eve is able to defend herself and attack back and Adam gets the opportunity to defend once more and attack one final time.  Here, Rasputin gets his opportunity to respond to Stalin stolen by Lenin, Gorbachev and Putin, and although Lenin’s able to address both Rasputin and Stalin, Gorbachev would rather talk about himself but remembers it’s a rap battle, and Putin doesn’t even bother to talk directly to anyone.

I suppose this counts as “bigger and better” rap battle, but while I agree with the bigger size and scope of having five rappers appear, I wouldn’t necessarily think it’s better.  The vast majority of the rap battles don’t adopt this format, and after a couple seasons, they even stop the practice of bringing in replacement rappers whenever someone can’t go on, because those replacements usually end up with the final verse and therefore don’t need to defend themselves against their opponent.  They come in from a position of strength and do nothing but attack.  The rap battles still do bring in surprise participants from time to time and which do come in from a position of strength to attack, but not as a replacement and usually they enter when the battle likely would’ve been considered over in any other context.

It’s also clear that Rasputin is out of his element here.  True, he does step up to the challenge and has some good lines against Stalin, but the rest of the historical figures who show up are all Russian leaders and barely speak to him.  Lenin’s purpose when he shows up is to put Stalin in his place and he has a token line for Rasputin, Gorbachev has something significant to say to both Lenin and Stalin, and only tells Rasputin to bathe a little more often, and Putin is just there to be Putin.

This format comes up two more times in the Epic Rap Battles, once in season four and once in season six.  I’ll have a little bit more to say about the one from season four, three weeks from now, and then season six’s five way when I get around to talking about that season.

I do appreciate that they like to try something different with the rap battles, and that they continue to occasionally experiment with the format (Ghostbusters vs. Mythbusters is a good example of this, as well as James Bond vs. Austin Powers).  Sometimes these experiments succeed and sometimes they do not, but the important thing is that they make the attempt.