An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective, Part 12

 

Season six of the Epic Rap Battles of History began in 2019 after a hiatus and a bit of a diversion with the Flash in the Pan Hip Hop Conflicts of Nowadays.  They really were a flash in the pan, since there were three of them in quick succession and then there were never any more.  There probably didn’t need to be any more, since it sounded like the intention was for the rap battles to not need to take another hiatus.

Of course, we all know what happened since then.  Ordinarily, with how long it took me to get back to this series, I would’ve gotten a lot further behind than I actually did, but COVID-19 affected the Rap Battles just as much as it did everything else.  Since the last time I wrote about them, only four new episodes have aired.  Part of this is due to how difficult it was to film anything during the pandemic, but also part of it is probably that it’s a lot harder to come up with rap battles when you mostly use live actors for every role.  It’s no wonder they got their idea for a rap battle featuring Big Bird out of the way in the Flash in the Pan Hip Hop Conflicts of Nowadays.  When you don’t have access to a Big Bird suit, there’s not a lot you can do even if you have a battle written out.

A few of the most recent rap battles feel like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with ideas, but that may be because I hadn’t even heard of some of the historical figures mentioned in them.  We’ll get to those eventually.

When it comes to rap battles to start a season with, season six’s premiere is probably the weakest out of all seven seasons.

 

Freddy Krueger vs. Wolverine

Best Line: “Nice glove, bub, but I’m real from bones to teeth.  And that claw is like a strap on, there’s a pussy underneath.”

I never got into the whole Friday the 13th series.  Or was it Nightmare on Elm Street?  Hang on, let me check.

Okay, it was Nightmare on Elm Street.  I never really watch slasher films because it feels like they’re made to accentuate gore at the expense of everything else.  I can see how that can appeal to some, but I’m not ten years old.

I wonder if the reason this feels like a weak opening to the sixth season is because I don’t have any nostalgia for the Nightmare on Elm Street series.  It’s not like that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying other rap battles.  The season four premiere with the Ghostbusters rapping against the Mythbusters was one of the best they ever made, and I’ve never sat down and watched any of the Ghostbusters movies yet.  The newest Ghostbusters movie looks like The Day After Tomorrow, which sucked, but since it’s in the Ghostbusters franchise, I’m assuming it’s being caused by ghosts instead of neutrinos.  Or were neutrinos 2012?  Hang on, let me check.

Okay, neutrinos were the cause of the end of the world in 2012.  The Day After Tomorrow was caused by extreme climate change.  You can see how easy it is to mix up details in samey-sounding movies.

But getting back to this rap battle.  I guess it feels weak since Freddy’s first verse is about crappy word play and making fun of comic books for being “for kids” and his second verse is all about how ignorant he is.  His biggest dis is basically that he doesn’t know what a wolverine is.  Dude is throwing out self-owns like Canadians and Blackberry cell phones.  Eat that word play, Freddy.  Wolverine is definitely much more prepared in this match-up.  It makes me wonder if he secretly loves watching slasher films and knows Freddy a lot more than Freddy knows himself.

 

Guy Fawkes vs. Che Guevara

Best line: Pretty much all of them.  This one should’ve been the season opener.

Now this is a bop.  This was one of my favourites to rewatch when it first came out.  It might not have felt epic in intensity but sharp writing and two strong characters can easily make up for that and elevate a battle to the stratosphere.   This also proves that just because I don’t like something, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to declare that the rap battle based on it sucks.  Guy Fawkes is such an overrated historical figure, I’ve never been interested in watching or reading V For Vendetta (but that one is due in part to the fanbase surrounding it; there are people who avoid Sonic the Hedgehog due to its fanbase, and V For Vendetta is my Sonic the Hedgehog), and the Anonymous mask has always looked so smug and stupid to me.  That’s probably why it was always so easy to make fun of Anonymous.  No matter how threatening they always seemed to be, it was nearly unavoidable to leave the impression that they were ten-year-olds cosplaying activism.

Here, though, Guy Fawkes gives as good as he takes and it’s hard for me to pick a winner.  Neither side feels like they’re ever on the ropes and in trouble, and it’s those fights that I like the most.  Curb stomp battles can be fun to watch as well, but if you look at it a certain way, those types of battles also show that the writers had a bias that they weren’t able to set aside for the sake of a fair fight.

 

Ronald McDonald vs. The Burger King

Best line: “Welcome to BK!  How can I serve you today?  One flame broiled ass clown?  Have it your way!”

Hang on, didn’t I do this one already?

For those who remember my previous post, this battle first appeared as a Flash in the Pan Hip Hop Conflict of Nowadays, but they changed a few lyrics and added another verse in the fully official Epic Rap Battles of History version.  I think the original version of the lyrics were better, personally, but this version of the battle is better because out of nowhere, Wendy shows up and rips on both rappers.

If I were given a choice of what to eat and I have options other than burgers, I’ll usually take them.  The last few times I went to a mall food court, I’ve chosen Asian food instead of American burgers.  It helps that they’ve recently added more Asian options at my preferred mall, and they even have pizza now.  Sorry, A&W, you’re only good for turnovers now and even saying that, I don’t buy them as much as I’d like because you’re often doing limited time flavours and your workers can’t read, or else they wouldn’t give peach turnovers to a customer who orders the apple ones.  For obvious reasons, I avoid them completely whenever the chocolate turnovers are around.  It’s not like they replace the turnovers whenever limited flavours are around, they just have both of them listed on the menu and somehow can’t tell the difference between the box marked “apple” and the box marked “not apple”.

It’s pretty funny, too.  It looked like they were going to go through the full alphabet at one point.  Apple turnovers were the first turnover they introduced and they’re a permanent fixture.  The first limited time flavour was blueberry, followed by cherry.  I thought they might try to look for a D next, but didn’t know if they were going to try dates, dragon fruit or durian.  Durian would’ve been funny and interesting, but dates might’ve been the best option of those three.  Instead, they went with peach, then chocolate, and then they’ve been returning to flavours they’ve already made rather than making more new flavours.  It doesn’t help that there isn’t a lot that they can do for E.  Elderberry is their best bet if they want a fruit that’s familiar to their North American customers.  Then comes figs, grapes (or grapefruit or guava… there are a lot of good G fruits) and huckleberry before they would’ve run into another dilemma with I.  I think it’s for the best that they nipped this pattern in the bud after cherry.

 

George Carlin vs. Richard Pryor

Best line: …do I really have to listen to this one several more times to decide which line I like the best?  I’m not going to torture myself.

Oh look, it’s this one, my least favourite of the five-way battles.  It really highlights the problem I have with these.  No one really gets a chance to respond or else the song would be far too long, and the guy who goes last has all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages of fighting in a rap battle.  You’ll notice that Vladimir Putin never received any disses in the season two finale.  They did try to change the formula a bit when various Greats faced Ivan the Terrible and when they did an A Christmas Carol inspired episode, and everyone got to snipe against Michael Bay in “Steven Spielberg vs. Alfred Hitchcock”, which ended up summoning him into battle.  I think that last method is probably the best for a five-way since it feels like everyone gets somewhat equal treatment, although the character who goes first will obviously get the most insults thrown at them.

This battle plays the concept as straight as they played it in “Rasputin vs. Stalin”, with characters being added one at a time and obviously the one who goes last has all of the advantages.  And speaking of biases against certain characters…

I feel like I need to call out the Epic Rap Battles a little bit here.  They gave three videos to Adolf Hitler and three videos (so far) to Donald Trump (I guess we’ll see what happens this year, if they do their usual American Election Rap Battle), but they don’t let Bill Cosby participate?  I know Bill Cosby turned out to not be a good person, but they’ve let some absolute monsters participate in rap battles in the past.  I would’ve liked to have seen a Bill Cosby verse, especially since they would’ve had a lot of material to draw from when writing it.  Instead, they made a joke about him getting roofied and tossed him aside.

It’s not like they couldn’t have just gone with someone else, either.  They went with classic comedians in this battle, so surely Jerry Seinfeld would’ve worked as a substitute for Bill Cosby.  It’s not like black comedians aren’t already represented in this battle, they have Richard Pryor.

The biggest tragedy is the verse with Robin Williams.  I suppose it’s fitting with his personality that they didn’t have him spitting a lot of fire.  Of course, he also had to make disses at everyone else in the battle within the time allotted to him, so he was spread a little thin for material.  But here’s the thing: he used to do some rather adult stand-up as well.  Instead of pulling his punches, there’s no reason he couldn’t have thrown a right Hook or two and left them all like broken Toys on the floor.  Instead, he didn’t do Jack against his opponents, Absolutely Anything would’ve been better.  I’m not even trying here.  If I was, I’d make everything rhyme.  It feels like they spent the same amount of time developing this verse like it was film at a One Hour Photo.  Imagine if they’d put a little more effort into this… what a concept.  The actual Robin Williams was a genius.  This feels like fan fiction written by an Artificial Intelligence or something.

In all, a rap battle featuring five four comedians should not have been this soft.  Joan Rivers was easily the best part of it, no one else came close.

 

Jacques Cousteau vs. Steve Irwin

Best line: Steve’s entire first verse.

By now, it’s pretty obvious why I’ve been putting off this post.  They made just as many misses as they did hits in the first half of season six, and I’ve not been looking forward to revisiting it.  There was another reason why I was avoiding this season, but that’s best left for the next part of the retrospective series.  This video, however, is definitely one of the hits, despite how much of a curb stomp it is.  Sorry, Jacques, you sucked in life and you sucked in this battle.

Both Cousteau and Irwin start on even ground, but it’s clear right away that Irwin basically takes control of the battle in his first verse.  Cousteau’s personal life is full of material for Irwin to mine.  Cousteau tries to play like Che Guevara and turn things back against Irwin in his second verse, but Irwin has a rebuttal right away for that and all Cousteau can do after that is throw child-like insults in response.  The most he can do in his second verse is the equivalent of “I’m going to eat this one specific snail that was named after you, what do you say to that, huh?”  So Irwin roasts Cousteau’s destructive methods of wildlife study in his second verse.  Honestly, this was already over as soon as we heard the match-up, but after hearing the material, it’s quite clear who won.  And I’m not just saying this as someone who genuinely liked Steve Irwin.  Cousteau doesn’t have a lot of material to work with and must resort to cheap insults against Irwin, who came armed with the same dynamite that Cousteau used to blow up the sea in order to see what was in it in the film Le Monde du silence.  This is another rap battle that I constantly returned to during season six, both because it was such a fun battle to watch and in order to remind myself that yes, they’re still capable of making good battles after the debacle that was the five- four-way comedians battle.

 

Season six was an uneven eleven episodes, and I definitely mean uneven in every sense of the word.  Not only is eleven an odd number, some of the battles were clearly better than others.  Next time (and I’m not going to take another two and a half years to get back to this series), I’ll discuss the remainder of season six and then finally catch up to the present.  I don’t know if the Epic Rap Battles will ever return to normal but at least they’re still keeping up their minimum pace of at least one battle per calendar year.

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, let’s do this.

Robin, your verse was dire, I expected you to spit fire!  You came in with a disadvantage, when you should’ve had the diss advantage!  You developed your flow like you were slow-mo, you used to be quick like One Hour Photo.  Children’s films have softened your stand-up.  You’re the quiet kid in class in the back with their hand up.  You punches were pulled, you should’ve lead with a right Hook, I’m putting more in this reply than you clearly took!  You didn’t do Jack against Carlin with his curses, Absolutely Anything was better than your verses.  And Mork & Mindy against Rivers, my guy?  Were your raps written by a fucking A.I.?  That was the laziest way possible to fight her, but you showed no Pryor understanding either.  Even an unconscious man would soon learn that he hasn’t got a Cos for concern!  This was a bore, I expected more: comedians like broken Toys on the floor.  They got the best of you in this five way production, next time bring more than your own self destruction.