Hi. IAmA (WeAreThe) creators of the Epic Rap Battles of History: Nice Peter (nicepeter), EpicLLOYD (epiclloyd) and Director/Editor Dave McCary (davemccary). Ask us anything!

Have you ever scrapped an ERB?

Ummm. Kinda but not exactly. We've shot stuff and then had to go back and reshoot entire days cause we lost sound and/or didn't like the performance (i.e. MJ vs. Elvis we lost a whole card from one of the cameras and I didin't like the way Elvis looked at first so I went back and changed some of the costume and we re-shot the whole first verse). We also still have some episodes that we haven't released yet that we still have a bunch of work to do on (i.e. Henry VIII vs. Hilary Clinton is all shot but we really wanna redo a ton of the music but just haven't been able to as of yet)

Henry VIII vs. Hilary Clinton? Holy shit...

Historical Womanizing World Leader Who Cheated on Powerful Women meets modern day Powerful Woman who was Cheated on by a Womanizing World Leader.

Hi guys! I've been a big fan since before the rap battles Pete. I have a few questions:

What made you guys decide to use HAL in the Jobs vs. Gates?

Did the Superman Socks Douche ever see the song?

Street Music 5?

special reddit rap battle request: Carl Sagan vs. Neil deGrasse Tyson

Thanks for doing this guys!

4:24 response given :D

Sorry about no response, I was watching Neil deGrasse Tyson videos :)

We decided to use HAL because we didn't want the Bill Gates Steve Jobs matchup to be so predictable. We thought HAL9000 could be brought into represent artificial intelligence and the aftermath of a singularity in computer technology. In other words, no matter what Jobs and Gates accomplished or didn't accomplish, they were gonna end up getting owned by their own computers in the end.

I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SUPERMAN-SOCK-DOUCHE

As far as I know he never saw the song, but I honestly have no idea, I don't remember his face from when it happened and now all I can think of is that big smiley face. I don't think I would recognize him in an elevator, but I do sometimes wonder if he's seen it, and if he saw me in an elevator what he might do.

Alright, what are your least favorite rap battles?

I wish we could have done more with Hulk Hogan vs Kim Jong il. I did a lot of the editing on that one, and I didn't do a very good job making it as clean and smooth flowing as the others. I usually just map out ideas in editing, but on that one I was rushing to get it out, and I think it shows.

I also would have liked to do more with Gandalf vs Dumbledore, we had a hard time getting those characters down, and again we were rushed for editing and trying out new techniques.

We had a new editor coming on board for that one, named Sean Barrett, he has done amazing stuff for us, making the intro scene for Vader v Hitler 2, making the 3D background worlds for Masterchief vs Leonidas. At that time, me and Sean were still trying to figure out our editing flow. We figured it out after Gandalf v Dumbledore, but that one had some kinks.

This has to be either the Napoleons, or the Kirk v Columbus battles. To be fair it had to be hard as hell to rap as any of these characters.

Hahaha, Kirk vs Columbus is one of my favorites. Mainly because of Kirk's disses. But I'm having a hard time thinking that there is a battle that Lloyd or Peter did not enjoy doing.

I got really hard on myself trying to get the Michael Jackson dancing and the Napoleon dancing. I hate the way I look dancing. That was my least favorite part.

What about Kim Jong-Il vs Hulk Hogan? I love all the rap battles in a way, but this one I just liked less. I'm gonna get so much hate for this.

no hate here. The editing was not nearly as strong. It's okay, I did a lot of the editing on that one, and I totally know it wasn't strong.

Macho man really saved that one for me

Yes. It was always all about the Macho Man.

Agreed. Although nicepeter's hulk Hogan impression salvaged it for me personally haha

We got to meet hulk hogan a few weeks ago. We were supposed to do a video with him, but it was rushed and didn't come out right. It was advertising for an advertisement he was doing, and the whole thing just felt too weird for me and we were spending too much time working on it instead of just making another battle, so we shelved it. for now... moo ha ha ha

What's the most outlandish request you've had for an ERB, or the most insane you've considered?

SInce they did Genghis Khan vs. the easter bunny I really want to hear the answer to this.

muhammed vs. jesus?

yeah, that never seemed like a good idea. I mean, don't get me wrong, we could make each other laugh with it, but... it never seemed like a good idea

I tried to post this earlier but I don't know if it showed up. We've seen a lot of Miley Cyrus vs Rebecca Black requests, which are very disturbing.

The most insane we've considered... I don't know... we've had some late writing sessions with a lot of beers that have gone in some weird directions.

For Nice Peter...

I know you idolize Freddie Mercury as much as -- if not more than -- I do. Musically speaking, he’s a huge inspiration of mine (as are you), and I can always hear the Queen influences in your music (for example).

So here’s my question. Would you ever do a rap battle with you as Freddie? It’s something I’ve been wanting to see since I started watching them (I’ve been around since #7, Einstein VS. Hawking), but I cannot for the life of me think of a worthy opponent for the god that is Farrohk Bulsara. I would have said Michael Jackson, but you already used him. Maybe Elton John? Even he’s not good enough, in my opinion.

TL;DR Who do you think would be a worthy adversary of Freddie Mercury in an ERB?

P.S.: Remember me?

Could anybody beat Freddie Mercury...?

I don't think anyone can beat Freddie Mercury, but I know of a few that could certainly stalemate him.

I do want to play Freddie, I don't know who to put him up against. We found a beat that makes us feel Freddie Mercury in our bones. That's a hard character to channel, I'm intimidated by it, but I would love to see him rap battle so much, so I'll always want to try it.

Can you release your cover of Somebody to Love for purchase? Also, can you find someone to do a cover of Under Pressure with?

LLoyd has a better singing voice than you might imagine....

Are there any historical figures who you would love to do, but just feel like their character can't inspire any good lyrics to use in the raps? And what character did you feel lyrics were easy to come up with?

We started working on Harry Potter vs Edward from Twilight, and that definitely did not inspire any good raps at all.

Nice Peter:

Since I'm an idiot and can't find it... how do we send in viewer mail?

Lloyd:

How tall are you exactly?

Dave:

What did you think when these guys came to you with this idea?

i had never met pete prior to him pitching the lennon/o'reilly battle. it was my 2nd week working at maker studios, and pete was also relatively new there. I actually don't remember exactly what i thought when he approached me with the idea. I just know i liked the song a lot, and i liked these guys a lot, and i was determined to make a good first impression.

I've got the address on my website, and you're not an idiot, it's just not easy to find. http://nicepeter.com

Which rap battle was easiest to produce? which one was hardest?

Looking back, the first Vader v Hitler seemed pretty easy for us in pre-production. Lloyd said "I am Adooooolf Hittlllaaaaa" and we laughed our asses off and the rest of Hitler started coming out that night. Vader's verse came in a flash on a couch in our old apartment. I remember sitting there watching some terrible movie on Netflix with my roommates, and I had the idea for "so many dudes been with your mom who even knows if I'm your father?" and I ran to my room and the rest just started coing out. We didn't have to do any research on that one really, we knew Star Wars and WWII pretty well. Nikki Fancy at Maker Studios got together that Vader Costume after running around all of LA looking for a decent one, and she made the little armband (this was pre-MaryDoodles days)
We had one night to shoot, in a tiny room with a green cloth, and we had a crew of 3 and the two rappers. I think we were done by 2am, after starting at 6 because Lloyd had to come after work.

Our "special effect" (every rap has a dimensional cross, except for a few, which drives me crazy in retrospect) was just Vader picking up Hitler and spinning him into his colored background. All that was, was us picking up Lloyd from under his legs and spinning him around. I was still in my vader costume, it was pretty run and gun back then.

That said, I think Dave may have put the most into editing that one. He's here in the room with me, as DaveMcCary on reddit. Dave what do you think, which was the hardest?

the first couple battles definitely required the most TLC in the edit, primarily because we hadn't completely locked down the visual approach, or what the ERB editing "rules" were. I remember in Oreilly/Lennon and the first Vader/Hitler, there was an outrageous amount of trial and error going on with those little guys you see on shoulders and whatnot. For those of you who are familiar with rendering time on final cut pro... we deal with so many layers and motion, so every microscopic move that's made seems like an eternity.

Been a fan for a little bit. You make amazing music, thank you.

I thoroughly enjoy the song "Heart Boner". What exactly was going through your head that caused you to coin the phrase?

Also, obligatory "STREET MUSIC OHMIGOD PLEASE."

I sent Kassem a dirty picture I "stumbled" onto this morning, because the dude in it was so hilariously dumb looking, and whenever I see hilarious dumb looking stuff I usually miss KassemG. I miss Street Music and everything about what was going on in my life during that time. It was a lot different, and much more simple, and either there was no pressure or I was just oblivious to it.

I wrote Heart Boner during that time. I had just met a girl and fallen pretty hard for her pretty fast. She had a good sense of humor, I think she may have actually coined the phrase. I went up to Dante's house in Pacoima, and I sat down at the drums and he played guitar, and I wrote the song there. Dante has a way of laughing that just keeps egging me on, so I started singing about this girl I liked, and I think there was a superman sock nailed on the wall from another video, so I said something about Superman. All that was going on in my head was just that rush-y feeling when you're excited about a girl. I had feelings for her in my heart, and I had a boner, and Dante was chuckling, so I sang it again and we recorded it.

Not a question, but you should use Watsky more.

Agreed. He looks an awful lot like a certain Doctor.... hmm....

Pete, I first heard you way back in 2005 on Red Bar Radio, and have been a fan ever since! 

Do you still do the older songs when you play live? (My favourite songs are 'High With Pauly', 'Hard to Stay', and 'Radical Muslim Penpal'!) Do you still perform live, and has your live show changed much with the success you've had? Do you think it's fair to say that the Epic Rap Battles struck a chord with quite a different target audience to the earlier stuff?

I know that was already a load of questions, and you don't have to answer this one if you don't want to! The last time you were on Red Bar, as a listener, the dynamic seemed very different to your other appearances. Was it just not clicking or was there something else? Was that probably your last appearance on the show?

(Please come back to the UK!)

First off: I love the Red Bar audience, always have, always will. I also love Mike D, always have, always will. He and the Red Bar listeners kept me going for years when I didn't have any internet presence at all and they were there egging me on when I was pretty low on my career and wanting to give up. We did an interview recently that was pretty awkward, but I think that's just because we're both strange dudes who admire each other and don't know how to express it without being more weird. Maybe we should have just made out.

My old manager from the UK who booked all my shows and made sure my drunk self got to a safe floor to sleep on is here visiting in LA, we're going to talk about what kind of tour we can do again now.

The live show would be different, I think that's okay, I always used to be afraid I'd never get anywhere because I could never do anything different. I think it's okay to keep changing and reinventing the way you express humor and music, at least I hope it is.

So you guys have talked about the crew getting bigger all the time, how big is your on set crew these days?

Right now we work with the following people on set Director - Dave McCarey DP - Jon Na We have a gaffer and his name is Arthur Hong Producer Michelle Maloney Set Coordinator - Atul Singh Dante rocks the playback And a script supervisor Marc Chester.

JON FUCKING NA

the very same Jon Na. he's awesome. we also have two costume people, a makeup person, the occasional break dancer or choreographer, Jose running behind the scenes camera, Russell helping with lights, Remy coming in last minute to make Dumbledore's Army rings, etc. A lot of people have helped us over the last two years, with all kinds of weird little specific things.

Did you guys ever write a poetry in high school?

I didn't write any poetry in high school. In tenth grade I was part of a duo singing funny songs, but I struggled really hard with writing the words, and stuck to writing melodies and chord progressions. I thought the other dude, named Jason Kinsey, was a much stronger writer, which he was, so I stayed pretty shy about writing. Later on in college I started examining songs I loved, I saw "Say It Ain't So" written out in a notebook, and it looked like a poem, so I started trying to write songs like that, in short little lines. They looked like poems and for a while I wrote everything like that, emails, letters, everything. I think it got irritating to people, so I tried to cut back on it.

shel silverstein was a huge inspiration growing up. i tried to incorporate comedic children's poetry into any school project where it might work. If you have not read "where the sidewalk ends," please please do.

You're work is genius. Do you really use Frooty Loops as mentioned in your Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs battle or some other program? Have you thought about doing a battle of the gaming antagonists with PHDs Dr. Robotnik vs Dr. Wily?

Fruity Loops was truly used on making the beat for Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates. The producer is a dude named Tristan Kraus, he also made the original Vader Hitler beat, coincidentally, he produced it under a different name and we found him in two different ways.

We don't produce the beats behind the rap battles, we work with a few different producers all over the world, at least, from Chicago to Poland, and they use a lot of different software to make the beats.

A few use Logic, a few use Fruity Loops, and I use Protools 10 on a mac to record the vocals and mix the final song.

How did you guys start?

me and lloyd met on a porch in Chicago, freestyle rapping, no joke.

me and Dante met at a coffee shop in LA, and then a few days later he called me to work on a song, and later that night we started a recording studio.

me and Dave Mccary met at Maker Studios, he was a new director/editor and he got quasi-randomly assigned to work on the first ERB. thank goodness.

Lloyd hired me years ago to work in his touring improv comedy troop. We traveled around the country and did improv at colleges and lunch rooms for a living, and we got along. Years later he moved out to LA to keep going on comedy, and he ended up running a comedy theater.

I stayed in Chicago for a few more years, but was at a pretty bad dead end in my career. I went out to LA to visit, Lloyd got me some stage time, took me out to the ocean at night, and I was hooked on LA.

When I moved out here, Lloyd's wife got me a gig at the University she works at that pretty much kept me afloat for the first month. I crashed on a mattress I found on the curb with 2 other guys from Lloyd's comedy troop. One of those dudes is named Colin, he played Billy Mays.

I got some work and some exposure, but was still struggling pretty hard with music, and after about 9 years, I was having a rough time of it. I was doing deliveries for a bakery, and working too much driving around.

Lloyd saw a casting/hiring notice for Maker Studios, and he passed it on to me, he was always doing that kind of thing, good dude, that Lloyd.
I submitted some scripts I had written, and they were terrible. Luckily, the guys who read them, called the Fine Brothers, also checked out my youtube channel and saw something I had made called a Picture Song, and they hired me to write/record 10 song parodies at Maker Studios for $100 each.

That was like the biggest deal of my life at the time. $1000 to write and record songs? Awesome. In retrospect, not that good of a deal, but they moved me out of that fast. Eventually the Fine Brothers left Maker Studios, and the guy who owns it, named Danny, some call him Danny Diamond, sat me down on a porch and asked me what was holding me back from being successful at music. After he cleared up all my excuses by giving me enough money to quit my job and a new computer and exposure, I was pretty much out of excuses.

I started focusing really hard on youtube. I learned as much as I could and took every detail as seriously as possible, while still trying to have fun and create. Me and Dante started recording more and more songs, and people started watching, and Danny took me out to Las Vegas where I met Shay Carl and KassemG, and then things started really picking up and I just kept trying to work at it.

Then one night Lloyd came to my old apartment, where I lived (not like that, jeeze) with MaryDoodles, who was constantly at her desk drawing while I was in my room shooting and editing and singing the same line over and over and probably driving my roommates and neighbor crazy (thanks Mary and Scott and ex-Israeli military guy next door)

Anyway, Lloyd came over and told me about this idea he had for an improv game onstage. Two people get suggestions, and they do a rap battle as two different characters. I thought it was a really really exciting and funny idea, and I don't feel that way about many ideas. We recorded a demo that night of the first rap battle, Chucky vs Michael J Fox. It was terrible, but it was still awesome enough to show me that it was solid idea for a video. And really vast, and endlessly possible.

So I asked the new audience who was watching my videos on youtube for suggestions, and they came back with a few hundred different ones, that was how many comments we were getting back then. Me and Lloyd sat down and looked through them all, and Bill ORielly vs John Lennon popped out at us both as something really special.

So, that's how we started, -it was Lloyd's idea for an improv game. -The audience came up with the pairing. -I saw it as a great idea for a video, and imagined a Mortal Kombat style multi-dimensional battle rap arena. -I told that idea to Dave McCary, he understood it, probably more than I did, and made it come to life. -Nikki Fancy at Maker Studios organized the crew, helped gather the costumes (it was originally supposed to be a "New York City" tshirt for John Lennon but we couldn't find one in California) -We made one rap battle, Lennon vs ORielly, and it performed well enough to start looking for another suggestion and get a little more funding from Maker. -We saw the suggestion of Darth Vader vs Hitler -rinse, repeat

nice peter, are you ever gonna update your old blog??

hahaha, I don't know. It's part of that strange attic of internet existence. I thought about deleting it, and now that you mention it I'm thinking about going back to it.

What is NP's favorite rap battle? What is EL's? Love you guys <3 Keep doing what you're doing.

I liked playing Beethoven a lot. It was fun to be an angry sulking dark musician. I gotta agree with LLoyd on my favorite overall video being Vader Hitler 2. I didn't think we could pull it off, and we just kept working at it and it kept getting better so we kept, and I was proud of our whole team, because I think we really did pull it off. And the audience came through and helped us kick off a cool second season, so it all made me feel pretty happy.