An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective Side Quest, Part 2

 

In the world of rap battles whose participants are drawn from history and pop culture, I don’t think there’s anyone who has been as prolific as Freshly Kanal.  Peter and Lloyd of the Epic Rap Battles of History and the Flash in the Pan Hip Hop Conflicts of Nowadays have produced 91 battles, not counting the cancelled match-up between Henry VIII and Hillary Clinton that I chose not to cover.  As of the recent season six finale, Freshly Kanal has produced over a hundred.  Let me introduce you to the straightforwardly named:

 

Rap Battle

Spotlight: Ghostface vs. Samara Morgan

One of the things one notices when browsing the archives of this series is that the quality of the visuals varies wildly between episodes.  I’m assuming Freshly Kanal didn’t have the same resources as the Epic Rap Battles when he started this series, but one of the things I’ve noticed about trying to work within your limits is that sometimes this can lead to some pretty creative work.  Sometimes, though, such limits aren’t so easily overcome.  The early episodes of Rap Battle mostly consist of stock images crudely animated, but this was probably the only real way to realistically produce rap battles featuring characters with distinctive looks like Mr. Incredible or non-human characters like Po from Kung Fu Panda, characters who would be next to impossible to film in live action on a budget.  If you can forgive the early battles their… creative visuals, there’s some gold to be mined.  Frisk from Undertale battling Chihiro from Spirited Away is probably one of the best from season one, and likely would never have been made by anyone but Freshly Kanal.

Season two tried out a couple live action rap battles, but the quality of those varied as well.  One thing I’ve noticed in the rap battle scene is that it takes a lot of work to make one, so a creator will reach out to get help from their friends.  It’s probably unfair to compare this series to the Epic Rap Battles of History because Peter and Lloyd have been able to secure the help of people like Weird Al Yankovik, Snoop Dogg and T-Pain over the years, among others.  In past articles, I’ve praised the casting of the Epic Rap Battles for being spot on more often than not.  Sadly, this is not always the case for the casting choices in Rap Battle.  I don’t know if it’s an actor problem or a director problem, but there are a few actors who appear in this series who just can’t physically emote very well.  It looks often like they’re just reciting their lines and performing their required actions but they’re not putting anything into their performance.  It’s probably ironic in a sad way that the first one I liked was the one between two faceless killers from horror films.

It helps when the actors’ lines are enunciated clearly as well.  Forrest Gump vs. The Waterboy is about as bad as you’d expect, because the actor playing Adam Sandler’s Waterboy was likely told to slur their speech to sound more like the original character, but this makes for a poor rap battle indeed.  In fact, many of the battles suffer from poorly enunciated lines lost in the voices the actors are trying to affect.  The Epic Rap Battles themselves weren’t immune to this, but it feels like they allowed themselves many more takes to get their lines right and more often than not, it worked out for them.

Spotlight: Coraline vs. Alice (Alice in Wonderland)

So you might be thinking that Rap Battle is a poor imitation of the Epic Rap Battles, end of story.  But here’s the thing: Freshly Kanal got better, and so did the rap battles.  The quality of each battle still varied depending on how much effort was put into it and whether or not the actors emoted or not, but a few of the battles started featuring custom animation even if many of them were still recycling animation from official sources.  The “Bonus Episode” tag line seemed like a license to put a bit less effort into the visuals as well, and to be fair it does help to temper expectations, but season one in particular was so full of “bonus” episodes, they outnumbered the “official” ones.

One episode might be Naruto vs. Hercules, featuring no custom artwork at all, instead pulling visuals from the Naruto anime and Disney’s Hercules.  Then the next one might be the live action Mr. Bean vs. Charlie Chaplin, featuring two live actors portraying the characters.  Then the next one might be a fully animated battle between Alice and Coraline featuring nothing but custom artwork.  The Epic Rap Battles typically have a consistent style so at least you know what to expect there.  It’s hard to know if one of Freshly Kanal’s Rap Battles is going to be hard to watch or not.

But when they’re good, they’re very good.  Bear Grylls vs. Steve Irwin is probably more dynamic and special effects laden than any of the Epic Rap Battles and shows what happens when a lot of effort is put into trying to make one of these look good.  The Epic Rap Battles still has the better Steve Irwin but when it comes to battles featuring Irwin, this one is superior because it covers more material on both sides.

In fact, now is a good time to mention that as Rap Battle continued to evolve, they started covering rappers that already featured in the Epic Rap Battles, but never fighting the same opponents.  I appreciate that neither series wants to step on the others’ toes.  Donald Trump features in one of Freshly Kanal’s battles, this time battling Montgomery Burns, and it makes a lot of sense to pair them together.  I wish we didn’t live in a world where Donald Trump keeps running for President of the United States because it feels like he shouldn’t have anything in common with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, nor did he deserve to have ever featured in more than one episode of the Epic Rap Battles of History.

Spotlight: Steve (Minecraft) vs. Sackboy (Little Big Planet)

When season four began, any question of what Peter and Lloyd might have thought about Freshly Kanal was finally settled.  They watched Jeff the Killer vs. Jason Dean and called it solid.  The comment section went nuts, snakebite126 (he provided Jason Dean’s voice) was overjoyed that someone at the Epic Rap Battles had heard his voice, and Freshly Kanal responded to Peter and Lloyd with, “I’m glad you dig the stuff!”  Season three might’ve had episodes with more views than Jeff the Killer vs. Jason Dean, but this feels like the moment when Freshly Kanal finally made the big time.

Season four also saw an increase in overall quality.  This is the season that gave the world Peter Griffin vs. Homer Simpson (a match-up worthy of the Epic Rap Battles, but which they never made), Kirby vs. The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Doctor Strange vs. Doctor Who.  When it comes to battles featuring The Doctor, this one featured much better writing than Doc Brown vs. The Doctor and covered a lot more material (although the battle did suffer from the same issue I pointed out above, where the actors don’t emote very well).  Honestly, it felt like Doc Brown vs. The Doctor was written from the Cliffs Notes version of both franchises, but Doctor Strange vs. Doctor Who felt like it was written by people who were familiar enough with both Doctor Who and the Marvel Cinematic Universe to craft something truly epic.

By the way, this won’t be the last time I’ll be mentioning snakebite126, he’s going to show up next week as well.  I should probably also mention that when it comes to actors appearing in Freshly Kanal’s videos, snakebite126 is consistently one of the best when it comes to enunciation, acting and emoting.

Spotlight: The Nutcracker vs. The Gingerbread Man

Overall, it’s been a joy to watch Freshly Kanal’s Rap Battles evolve over the years into what it is today.  I may be harsher than I probably should be towards the early battles, but it’s hard to look at recent videos like Paul Bunyan vs. Johnny Appleseed and then compare it to any of the battles from the first couple seasons.  The most recent battle, released less than a week ago and which appears to be the intended end to season six, is between Star-Lord and Captain Jack Sparrow, a match-up that sounds genius and you can’t help but wonder how the Epic Rap Battles never did that one either.  Even with all of this success, Freshly Kanal never forgot his roots; one of the most recent Rap Battle episodes is between Six from Little Nightmares and Wirt from Over The Garden Wall, and that’s the kind of match you would never see from the Epic Rap Battles.

Next week, I’ll be highlighting what I call the best of the rest.  There are a lot of content creators making rap battles and not all of them are good, but there are some that still deserve mention.