An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective, Part 14

I’ve been looking forward to finally making it to present day with this series.  I can’t quite remember why I wanted to do these other than to fill space while working on other stuff and it turned into an albatross in its own way, especially since it turned out that one rap battle had to wait until I’d watched Avengers: Endgame.  I didn’t care about spoilers for anything else, but it was the Marvel Cinematic Universe that was keeping me from doing the rest of these articles.  I’m not going to worry about needing to watch any of the King Kong or Godzilla movies before writing this week’s article, or else it might take several more years before I’m finally ready.

Anyway, this week marks the start of my season seven articles.  And… the end, for now.  I don’t know how long they plan on making season seven last, or how quickly they’re planning on making more rap battles.  It almost feels like maybe the time for the Epic Rap Battles of History is finished, like the drive to make them is gone, but that could just be because they’re fully independent and may or may not be able to afford the same things they used to be able to afford.  That said, the most recent battle made use of motion capture and I can’t imagine that was easy to set up.  Maybe this could be an example of the “bigger and better” that was mentioned at the end of season one.

Anyway, without further ado, let’s jog to the (current) finish line.

 

Ragnar Lodbrok vs. Richard the Lionheart

A couple weeks ago, I suggested that season six did not start out strong.  Season seven definitely did.  No one line was the best, it was all fire from both sides.  It’s weird to think that a rap battle with Freddy Krueger could be weak but it was.  Compared to that, this one not only had a good driving beat throughout, but both rappers kept their flow going and didn’t let up.  I think that’s what felt off about Krueger as a rapper.  He sounds perfect as a slasher antagonist but not as a rap battle participant.

Although I freely admitted that I’d not watched any of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (nor Friday the 13th movies, but that was part of a joke I was making), my assessment of the quality of a rap battle is not dependent on if I know both participants.  I’d never heard of Ragnar Lodbrok until this battle was released, but it didn’t impact my enjoyment any.  I liked it just as much as I liked any other rap battle that I liked (oof, that’s a sentence).  In fact, this isn’t the only battle in season seven that contained at least one opponent that I had no idea ever existed.  The only Ragnar I know of is the one from Dragon Quest IV and come to think of it, I wonder if that means that the character in the game was named after the real life legendary figure.  The localization of Dragon Quest III named two NPCs after the actors who starred in the 1935 film Captain Blood, so I guess it’s possible that Ragnar McRyan is inspired by Ragnar Lodbrok.

Richard the Lionheart, of course, shows up in Disney’s Robin Hood as an actual lion, so this makes me wonder how long it’s going to be before we get Robin Hood in one of these rap battles (he doesn’t even have to be a fox).  Or Errol Flynn for that matter (he probably doesn’t have to be a fox either).  Fun fact: Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland starred in both Captain Blood in 1935 and The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938.

 

Jeff Bezos vs. Mansa Musa

This is the other rap battle featuring someone I had never heard of, so when season seven had started, it honestly felt like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel of ideas.  Since then, several battles have released which feel like, “Oh wow, why in the world didn’t they do this one yet?  It’s so obvious a match-up!”

However, just because you’re at the bottom of the barrel doesn’t mean that you’re completely running on empty.  The first battle of the season turned out great, of course.  Here, I might not have known who Mansa Musa was before this battle was released, but it was still such a great battle.  I also feel like Mansa Musa absolutely roasted Jeff, but I admit that could be an anti-Amazon bias.  There’s absolutely no reason that one man needs so much money.  At this point, he’s just running up a high score.  It kind of feels like the billionaires of this world are trying to compete with one another to see how much money they can accumulate.  It’s like watching people compete in Gems of War to see how many points they can gain in each weekly event, and there’s always at least one sweaty tryhard who outdoes everyone else with mathematically impossible numbers.

That’s kind of how it feels like a billionaire is.  Mathematically impossible.  If I had a billion dollars, I would never be able to spend all of that money on myself and be able to enjoy everything I was able to acquire.  I would either have to buy expensive stuff that I wouldn’t enjoy even if I did use it, or buy a bunch of stuff that I did enjoy but would never be able to experience in my lifetime.  Imagine being able to afford every video game ever made.  Even now I doubt I can get through my current collection before I die, and I also own a bunch of books I’ve been meaning to read.  The only thing I’d be able to really do with a billion dollars is to get other people to use it instead of me.  There are so many charities that do good work which I would be able to help out.

I would also love to just make peoples’ day on Twitch with small enough sums that I wouldn’t call too much attention to myself right away but large enough sums that it makes a difference in their lives.  If it covers their rent for a month, I think they’d be very happy and so would I.

Hording wealth really makes no sense to me.  If you’re not using the money and you have enough that you don’t have to worry about lean times, why even hang onto it?  One of the most interesting revelations one can have is when one watches A Christmas Carol for the fiftieth time and… I don’t quite know how to describe the revelation that Scrooge is eating what is the equivalent of starvation rations, because we all understand that he’s a miser and that he is reluctant to spend any of his money, but the realization that he’s not even spending the money on himself is mind blowing.  Like, he should be buying himself something better than porridge for dinner.  Jacob Marley is a bit of undigested beef?  There’s more gravy than the grave about him?  When have you ever purchased beef for yourself, Ebenezer Scrooge, or prepared a delicious gravy?  Do you even remember what either of those taste like?

Again, we know academically that he’s not spending it on himself, but the moment it sinks in and we realize that he’s really not taking care of himself at all, that’s just mind blowing, and a little sad to think about.  I bet Jeff Bezos probably eats well, unlike anyone working for him at any of his warehouses.  Honestly, dude could afford to raise the wages of his workers, but he just doesn’t want to.  Paying his workers better would decrease the speed at which his high score goes up.

I have several hundred million gil in Final Fantasy XIV and I’ve given away a lot of it over the years.  There really isn’t a lot to do with it and I realize that I’m just running up a high score, too.  The one big difference is that hoarding wealth in Final Fantasy XIV harms no one because there are always ways to generate more no matter who you are, and the game is usually balanced to where players don’t have to save up for the necessities.  That’s actually been a thing in the series for a while now.  Most Final Fantasy games outside of the NES era don’t require players to save up for things they need, and even in Final Fantasy XVI, everything a player needs can be bought almost immediately, and luxury items like the orchestrion rolls will eventually start being affordable around a third of the way through.

This one rap battle could be a rant in and of itself, but we have four more to go and I don’t want to wait yet another week to finish.

 

John Wick vs. John Rambo vs. John McClane

Best Line: There’s a lot of good lines, but I’m especially fond of “Nothing is over!  Nothing!  You just don’t turn it off.  Unless it’s one of your movies, in which case I just turn it off!”

John won.

It’s actually pretty interesting just how many action heroes ended up being named John.  You wouldn’t think there would be, because John isn’t a name that sounds like an action hero.  I think this is what the makers of Star Ocean: The Last Hope were going for when they created Edge Maverick, they were going for an action hero name, but they got absolutely roasted by fans.  Besides, even Star Trek, which the Star Ocean series often likes to draw inspiration from, names its captains normal things like James, Benjamin and yes, even Jonathan.

Jonathan Archer is such a strong name for a captain.

Speaking of getting roasted, Final Fantasy XVI got it a bit for calling its protagonist Clive (I guess this tells you just how many people didn’t play Wild Arms 3).  Clive isn’t a bad name per se, but if John is a good enough name for Die Hard, maybe Final Fantasy XVII‘s protagonist should consider it.

Oh, come now.  You all know there’s going to be a seventeenth.  It’s as inevitable as Thanos.  (And as Iron Man as Tony Stark.)

This rap battle is, I think, the first one that outright admits that it’s a three-way battle right at the start.  Other battles introduced more than two participants from the start, but it was always one side vs. the other.  Battles where a third participant joined the fray partway through (often followed by a fourth and fifth) didn’t reflect this in their titles and it was always meant to be a surprise.  This is the first time where all three are present from the start, and it’s actually pretty interesting to see how they play off one another.

I may dunk on the Epic Rap Battles for slowing down their releases to a near trickle, but season seven has been pretty strong so far.  All six battles that have been released are amazing, and this one is no exception.  There’s a big reason why I haven’t outlined very many of the best lines in these battles this time, and that’s because of how strongly written these are overall.

As an experiment at a different format, this battle works so well.  Each participant only gets one full verse, but that’s okay because there’s enough banter before and after the verses that it feels like we’re not losing out.  Plus, since everyone’s present at the start, everyone gets a fair shot at everyone else.  This isn’t like when Rasputin went first in the Russian five-way and didn’t even know that there would be three additional participants, so he only got to take shots at Stalin.  Stalin, likewise, only got to take shots at Rasputin, and then along came Lenin, who took shots at both of them and they didn’t get to defend themselves against him.  It’s certainly epic in scope, but it’s also not a fair fight.  This battle of action hero Johns is a much more fair battle.

 

Lara Croft vs. Indiana Jones

Speaking of action heroes, this is one of those surprising match-ups that make you think, “How was this not a season two battle?  It’s as obvious as Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates.”  I may not have played any of the Tomb Raider games, but I was cheering for Lara Croft.  That said, both Lara and Indiana got some pretty good jabs in, and I didn’t get the sense that this was a one sided battle.  In fact, I don’t think any of the battles in season seven were very one sided.  We all know how crappy a person Jeff Bezos is, but he was still able to get a few hits against Mansa Musa, and I appreciate that.  I still think he lost, but at least he was able to get those hits in.

Call me crazy, but it almost feels as if Indiana Jones comes off as a bit of an antagonist in this battle.  I think it might be because he’s battling Lara Croft, but even taking that into account, he doesn’t give off the same vibes in his movies as he does in this battle.  I was discussing this with a friend and she suggested that everyone’s a little out of character in these battles.  After thinking about the entire series in general, I think I would have to agree.  From the Columbus vs. Captain Kirk battle where I criticized their portrayal of Kirk stumbling over his words in an exaggerated manner to the questionable portrayal of Batman in Batman vs. Sherlock Holmes, there have certainly been instances where the characters portrayed in a battle have acted a bit different than how I would’ve expected them to.  Adam vs. Eve was more along the lines of a marriage spat than a rap battle, right down to the language used.  And so on.

Not every battle feels completely out of character, as certain portrayals were spot on.  But some people and some characters were so iconic that it’s easy to see how difficult it would be to get them exactly right.  That’s probably what’s going on with this battle and why I feel the way I do about Indiana Jones.  Nice Peter was portraying him as the cocky younger man he was in the original trilogy, and so it feels just a little bit out of place in a rap battle.

An interesting bit of trivia about this battle is that at the end of it, the song flowed into a Raid: Shadow Legends ad, but I guess the sponsorship period might be over because the video no longer contains the ad.  The other sponsorships they’ve done over the years still exist in the videos, like the Rise of Kingdoms sponsorship in Ragnar Lodbrok vs. Richard the Lionheart and the Assassin’s Creed IV logo at the start of Blackbeard vs. Al Capone.  I wonder what made Raid: Shadow Legends different enough that they felt the need to scrub it completely from the video a year or so later.

 

Henry Ford vs. Karl Marx

One of my favourite features of the Jackbox Party Packs are the room codes.  You can make so many fun and interesting sentences with those four randomly generated letters.  FORD is probably a very easy one to work with.  The battle itself gave us “Found On Road Dead”, which is itself an old joke about the quality of Ford vehicles.  Let’s see…

Fixing’s Only Rarely Done
Foxes Outpace Rabbits Daily
Freddy Offers Real Deals
Filling Out Roger’s Dungeons

How about KARL?

Killed A Rather Large Kangaroo And Rapidly Left (had to do his name twice for this one)
Keith Allocated Red Lanterns
Kings Are Rarely Loyal
Karen Ate Rapidly, Louise
Kamloops Attracts Relocated Lynxes

MARX seems tough but let’s give it a go

Maybe Attach Ralph’s X-rays?
Mice Almost Reached Xanadu
Mangoes Are Really Xanthic
Meeting A Red Xoloitzcuintle
Mightily Axing Roger’s Xylophone

I don’t think HENRY should be left out, but it’s five letters so it wouldn’t come up in Jackbox.  Still, for completion’s sake, we could turn it into sentences like “Hey, Eric’s Now Really Yellow”.

 

Godzilla vs. King Kong

Ever since it’s inception in 2010, there has always, without exception, been at least one rap battle per calendar year.  Even when going on hiatus, they found ways to fulfill this.  The final battle of season five was released on January 9, 2017, meaning that they had that year covered very early and could wait a while before releasing their next one.

They waited until December of 2018, when they released the Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg battle.  According to the Wikipedia episode list, it’s this battle that Lloyd considers to be the start of season 6, which may explain why the Freddy Krueger vs. Wolverine battle was so weak.  It was not intended to be the season six premiere after all, despite how the episodes are listed on Wikipedia.

The pandemic may have hit in 2020, but they were still able to make two videos that year, one of which was their regular election video, and one of which was a battle done entirely by Lego.  This wasn’t the first time they did a Lego battle, and it’s pretty smart to make another one in order to continue a season that got cut short by a plague on everyone’s houses.

Season seven has been so slow in coming out, but I would probably blame the pandemic for that one, too.  Three battles released gradually over the course of 2021, but then there was one battle released on October 25, 2022 and one released on December 1, 2023.  Releasing a battle in December after releasing nothing for the rest of the year really does feel like they’re making the battle for the sake of keeping the streak alive, but the quality of the writing of these battles has been such that you don’t really notice the date.  It may be the obligatory yearly rap battle, but they also clearly spent the entire year making sure the battle works.  Last year’s lone battle, Henry Ford vs. Karl Marx, is lyrically superior to many battles that were created when a season’s episodes aired a lot closer together.

This year, we’ve received a battle relatively early in the year.  Usually when that happens, there are going to be several more releasing before the end of the year, but we’re currently in a period where there aren’t a lot of battles known to be in production.  To me, this may mean that they’re hedging their bets and leaving open the possibility that they’re pulling out of the 2024 election if it ends up being a repeat of 2020.  I don’t think we’ve ever had a presidential candidate in one of the two major parties in the United States return for a third election in a row, and if he does, this would be the fourth rap battle featuring Donald Trump, meaning he’ll have participated in the most Epic Rap Battles ever.  Right now, he’s tied with Hitler and Darth Vader for headlining battles, and also with Abraham Lincoln for participating in them; Lincoln crashed the election battles in 2012 and 2016 (where he slapped Trump twice).

If they do pull out of the election and refuse to release a rap battle for it, they’ve already got 2024 covered and don’t need to rush anything out at the last minute.  This one certainly wasn’t rushed, given the motion capture and CGI used.  Clearly it was in the works for a while.

And there we go.  We’re caught up to present day.  There are no more Epic Rap Battles and I’m going to go out on a limb and say there won’t be for a little while.  There certainly won’t be enough to do another part of this retrospective any time soon.  The only way to continue it is if we were to look at the rap battles that were inspired by Peter and Lloyd’s creation.

…hey, now there’s an idea.