An Epic Rap Retrospective, Part 6 (Day One)

 

So there’s one thing I think I need to address before getting to this week’s rap battles.  Given that I’m including a “curse watch” and am talking about the deaths of popular characters, there’s going to be some spoilers involved if you haven’t read or watched everything covered.  This is especially true this week, given the first rap battle involves both Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, which are extremely popular but which I’m sure not everyone has seen.

Now that everyone’s been warned…

 

Rick Grimes vs. Walter White

Best line: “I kill zombies that are better men than you before breakfast.”
Runner up: “Ask Gus, you don’t wanna face off against me.  I’ll stuff you in a barrel and make a dude smoothie.”
Curse watch: Spoiler alert, Walter White did not survive Breaking Bad, which ended its run a year before this battle premiered.  This protected Rick Grimes from the ERB curse.  He ultimately survived all nine seasons of The Walking Dead, which ended in 2010, four years before the premiere of this battle, and thanks to his protection from the curse, he is shown to be alive in Fear the Walking Dead, currently six seasons long with a seventh scheduled for later this year.  Rick’s comic book version ultimately died in issue 192, one issue before the sudden and unexpected end of the series.

The rap battles have certainly come a long way.  I don’t see them being able to pull off what they do in this battle back in season one.  It’s also a testament to the lasting legacy of both Walter and Rick that even today, I don’t look back at this video and think “wow, that didn’t last long, did it?” like I do with some of the controversial figures that have appeared in the past, like Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus.  They are, of course, still around but everyone has since moved on from their controversies, even themselves.  People are still discussing The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad to this day.  There’s just a lot to say about both shows.  I don’t know how much executive meddling occurred to each show, but perhaps thanks to being shown on AMC and not a major network like ABC or CBS, the shows got to carve their own little niche on television without being forced to turn into something similar to CSI or NCIS and even inspired spin-offs like Fear the Walking Dead and Better Call Saul.

 

Goku vs. Superman

Best line: “Who’s got the rap bombs to drop on Japan?  This looks like a job for the OG.”  “Superman!”
Runner up: “Your rapping is weaker than your fight scenes.  Just one punch and OVER NINE THOUSAND SCREAMS!!!!!”
Curse watch: This is probably one of the most famous deaths in geek culture.  Superman’s death at the hands of Doomsday… does this even count as a spoiler if everyone knows about it?  I don’t even need to look for any other instances of Superman dying in the comics or in other media to know that this protects Son Goku from the ERB curse.

By now, death stunts in the comic books are old hat, but Superman’s death was such a big deal that it caught everyone by surprise.  Wait a minute, we all said.  Superheroes can die?

I mean sure, death happened in comic books.  The reason no one in the 90s had heard of Gwen Stacy was because she had been killed off in the comics and Peter Parker later met Mary Jane Watson and it was Mary Jane who was used in film and television adaptations for a bit until everyone suddenly remembered who Gwen was after the Sam Raimi trilogy.  Meanwhile, Ben Parker’s death is an integral part to the character arc of Peter Parker no matter which version it is… and come to think of it, it seems like a lot of the famous non-superhero comic book deaths happen to revolve around Spider-Man.  Now I’m not saying this is a Jessica Fletcher situation, but…

(Oh, and bonus points for that video link also featuring a Breaking Bad/The Walking Dead theory.)

 

Stephen King vs. Edgar Allan Poe

Best line: “I’m the author with the blood and gore lore galore that’ll horrify a reader to the core.  Fame?  Money?  Talent?  Success?  You’ll always have less.  Never more.”
Runner up: “Poe’s poems pwn posers.”
Curse watch: Edgar Allan Poe died well before the premiere of this battle, protecting Stephen King from the ERB curse.

A man dressed as a victim of an unspeakable plague arrives at a masquerade ball where a thousand nobles are attending.  They’ve isolated themselves from the rest of society so that they can continue to live their lives and not have to worry about what the poor are going through just outside the walls of the estate.  A terrible pandemic is decimating the world, but the rich just want to keep living their lives and enjoying themselves.  So when the man in the plague victim costume shows up, the nobles are rightly terrified of him and the estate’s owner, Prince Prospero, is angry.  He wants to know who dares bring up the pandemic in the presence of himself and his friends as they try to bury their heads in the sand and ignore what’s going on.

He pursues the mysterious man through several rooms in his estate until he reaches the final room and confronts the man.  But upon unmasking him, Prospero and the guests find out to their horror that the costume is empty and the only thing it contains is the plague that’s ravaging the land, for it has come for them at last.

Anyone want to write a modern day version of Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death?  I can guarantee it would be scary.  “And Darkness and Decay and COVID-19 held illimitable dominion over all.”

 

Sir Isaac Newton vs. Bill Nye

Best line: “Of all the scientific minds in history, they put Beaker in a bow tie up against me?”
Runner up: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, except for when we both start rapping.”
Curse watch: Isaac Newton died long before the premiere of the battle, protecting Bill Nye (and Neil deGrasse Tyson) from the ERB curse.

This battle has not one but two special guests and it makes me wonder just how connected Peter and Lloyd actually are, if they can get Weird Al Yankovik for a battle.  (It would’ve been funny if Weird Al had played Lady Gaga in season one, since he did it for himself at roughly the same time.)

The cameo that stands out for me, though, is Chali 2na’s.  I never expected to hear the guy from “Frgt/10” on the Linkin Park remix album and DJ Format’s “We Know Something You Don’t Know” in an Epic Rap Battle but he does play a good Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Yes, that’s the actual music video, it was big in the furry fandom for a few months.  You could say that I’ve accidentally followed Chali 2na’s career by being in the right fandoms at just the right time, like a geek version of Slumdog Millionaire.  I’m just watching what I think is a standard rap battle in 2014 when suddenly, there’s his distinctive baritone voice and deliberate delivery of lines in the Epic Rap Battles of History, somehow overshadowing Weird Al’s presence, and Weird Al is the one who was promoting an album at the time.

 

George Washington vs. William Wallace

Best line: “Look at ya, in your little blousy outfit, looking like a stiffer white dick than your monument!”
Runner up: “The only Washington I trust is Denzel.”
Curse watch: Both passed away long before the premiere of the battle.

Sad to say, I think this is my least favourite battle of season three.  It’s too bad what Mel Gibson did to William Wallace, turning him into a Scottish stereotype and figure of mockery.  It seems like if you want to add some humour into your movie, you just have a character act like Bravehart for no apparent reason.

This is one of the creative decisions that went into the 2018 movie Elliot the Littlest Reindeer.  The character of Peanutbutter is played by legendary ventriloquist Jeff Dunham and is portrayed as a Scottish horse wearing William Wallace make-up for no real reason.  It’s a cute film and I hope to see a second one someday because Hazel the goat is my favourite character and I want to see more of her but I will be the first to admit it’s not a good movie.  Fun to watch but not good.  Maybe I should just look for more of Samantha Bee’s movies instead, since she provides Hazel’s voice.

As for this battle, it feels like they wasted George Washington, but then I honestly don’t feel that attached to any of the American founding fathers (or the Canadian ones, come to think of it), so seeing them portrayed in an Epic Rap Battle just feels like a waste to me since the only thing many of them are famous for outside of the United States is having their name attached to the founding of a country, whereas people are more likely to know things about some of the other historic figures presented in these battles, like Isaac Newton or Edgar Allan Poe.  It’s a good thing this isn’t the season finale because that would’ve been a bad video to end a season on.

 

Tomorrow: the season three finale gets special attention.