Left to right Left to right Left to right
Left right. Left right.
Left right. Left right. Left right. Left right
Turn it up
We're truly living in an interesting time
where technology has the capability of enhancing anyone's ability
Just about anyone with a phone and laptop can make a movie connection
In that same regard
just about anyone with a guitar and internet connection
can be a superstar.
There are thousands of free tutorials online where you can learn just about any instrument
Too lazy to learn, that's fine
There are also a number of loops and beats you can sing and rap over
vocals can now be auto-tuned
so it sounds like the artists can actually hold a note
This technological advancement is why some claim
talent is more prominent in old songs or music before the 90s
But I would argue that since everyone has the capability to become adequate musicians
this is where we see more talent emerging
because technology has set the bar higher,
I believe we are now able to spot talent that surpasses the aid of technology
I see it as best illustrated in the ecosystem of youtuber music
There are dedicated videos that discuss why youtubers make such bad and cringy songs
In fact, I sometimes dread when my favorite youtuber announces,
they will be releasing a song
However, there is one channel that actually makes me excited whenever they upload one
and that's Epic Rap Battles of History
Their videos don't evoke that same cringe reaction.
Why is that? What makes us cringe at this?
(Left right)
Turn it up
And applause for this?
how you gonna talk about a bat being blind?
You need to echo-relocate to the 4th of July
because you're Ms. Independent or at least you try
but your first story is you running off with a guy
Welcome psych IRL. My name is Donna. I know what you're thinking
Oh, look! Here comes another youtuber critiquing other youtubers diss tracks
without making one herself. Well, that's fair
So I guess I'm gonna have to make one too,
and you're gonna join in the process and watch me embarass myself
And the only person that would be willing to embarrass herself too is my sister Ella
Hi
For the remainder of this video when I refer to youtubers
I don't mean channels who are dedicated to making music.
Lots of those folks are pretty talented
I'm talking about channels who make a variety of content and then decide to put out a song, randomly
Okay, like I said, it can get annoying when someone critiques something without doing the craft themselves
So to keep things fair today, I'll be attempting to make an ERB styled rap battle to highlight
what makes them so special compared to the rest of YouTube.
spoiler alert!
There is a 90% chance that mine will be bad,
but it'll definitely prove the thesis that technology cannot be a substitute for
talent and practicing your craft.
With that, step one is having passion and practicing
many times youtubers create a song because they want to try something new
and that alone is how a youtuber song can go bad
I might be a little late
while I'm bathing in the hate
I'm a yacht, yeah
There was no practice or passion behind it
the sole motivation was simply, wanting to try something new
I personally find nothing wrong with this
but you can tell there is a difference between the music of
Someone who wants to try something new and someone who is experienced
you're a glitchy old man, best left out at sea
set sail and Galapago-suck on these
Look might morphin Michael Vick
your animated slave fights make me sick
when I battle a foe
from so simple a beginning, I'm not Charles Sheen
but I am Dar-winning
In the case of epic Rap Battles of History,
Peter Shukoff AKA Nicepeter and Lloyd Ahlquist AKA epiclloyd first met
First met freestyling on a porch in Chicago
Both had moved there to study improv and comedy
They would tour the country in an improv comedy group called mission Improvable
Nicepeter and Epiclloyd would later go their separate ways and improve their craft on their own
Epiclloyd started a comedy theater called westside comedy theater and Nicepeter
working on a channel called the station which would later become maker studios and then disney digital
the duo then reconnected to perform comedy once again
They decided that one of their live segments called celebrity rap battle would best be executed online
the concept of course involves two characters clashing in a battle of words rhyme and rhythm
Thus the channel epic Rap Battles of History was born and now boasts over 3 billion views
So in terms of practice, passion, and background, ERB is leaps and bounds ahead of most youtubers
I'm a geek. You're a nerd. I'm slick. You're cheesy
beating you is apple too easy
And since it's impossible for me to condense their improve and comedy experience
in time to upload this video, my sister and I will rap to some Eminem songs for an hour or so
that should be enough, right?
Unfortunately. I can't show you this clip because of copyright. Trust me
It's probably a blessing in disguise
that leads us to step 2 which is the idea process and deciding who the battle will be about
there is an additional layer of motivation
characteristic of social media platforms of why someone publishes a song
this layer is the views
the need for views can heavily impact who the rap battle will be about or who will be doing the rapping
a strong emphasis on views may result in a decrease of musicality
in this instance, for example
When a popular youtuber david dobrik raps on his friends track
A lot of the comments are pretty much roasting his rapping skills
a lot of people were saying David needs to get better at his rapping skills
Yeah, people were really mean to me in the comments.
Dam! David ruined the song. I'm like
It's a Duerte Dom song
a big element for that is because Dobrik doesn't necessarily want to be a rapper
His main motivation is to help his friend gain views by using his name
I may be white, but I'm feeling whiter
Got all my homies here. We're all tighter
tighter than you will ever be
cuz I'm over here pulling all nighters
A lot of fans just want to see if their favorite internet star can sing or rap
The fact is definitely important to take into account in today's social media driven world
There are a rising amount of stories that your follower count is now
a consideration casting directors take when you go in for an audition.
This is simply for marketing purposes
The person with a bigger following will drive more eyes to show their in
so follower count or viewership doesn't necessarily equate to how much skill one has
the viewership of this video is mostly wanting to know if Dobrik can rap
while the viewership of ERB is of the actual content in the rap
What about we do Jojo Siwa and Emma Chamberlain?
Those are kids though
Oh that's true
It'd be weird to do like a diss track between two kids and we're like in our twenties
Let's do Phillip Defranco and Keemstar
But I don't really know them
I know Liza
See, this is a problem. We don't watch the same creators
since me and my sister don't really watch the same youtubers
we settled on doing Liza Koshy vs Superwoman
now, we're gonna have to do a lot more research than usual because we don't really know these two creators
but it's a good compromise
step three is research
And in my opinion the lack of is the biggest component to why a youtubers diss track
may cause me to roll my eyes
ERB does a thorough job of who they pit against one another
we take all of our minds and combine them into one process
that there is no specific process
we just kind of really let an idea kind of marinate
we dream about it where we really try to do is be like
not the Wikipedia version
Stephen Hawking is probably the an interesting example of like I didn't know a lot about physics going into it
and for that whole two-week writing process
there were just physics books just around the studio and we would read them
and and it was Dante who was like, oh this thing about ten million particles
There are 10 million million particles in the universe
that we can observe
your mama took the ugly ones and put them into one nerd
In the beginning they were very familiar with the characters he wrote about. As the channel grew though
they began getting requests of popular characters they didn't know that much about
in an interview done by entrepreneur.com, NicePeter says a video can take up to 2-3 months to complete
because of this lack of knowledge
from watching each video, it's hard to tell who they are and aren't fans of
the references and rhymes are so well researched,
their disses are done much better than youtubers who make diss tracks of people they actually know
when you watch the diss track between Logan and Jake Paul for example,
all they essentially say is, "you suck I'm better than you"
I'm a dog. You're a puppy, call you Kong
You was poppin' on Vine but now your content's sh_
That's why you drop a song and text me to promo it
You don't really see that
OHHHHHH!
Factor
you could tell ERB really gets into the soul of the character they're playing
Okay, so now we're in the research process
I kind of feel bad because Liza and Superwoman are such like nice people.
Okay, so I guess we have to think about
well-known controversies for each person
And the thing is it doesn't necessarily have to be true
because that's what they do in epic Rap Battles of History
like in the Pewdiepie vs. T-Series one
when they're talking about the Wall Street Journal
Everyone was mostly on PewDiePie's side, but it's still kind of a funny jab
jumping you in subs is just my next hurdle
first I'll crush you with my words like the Wall Street Journal
And then we don't have to also make fun of their controversies we can also make fun of the stuff they
succeeded in like in the Skrillex and Mozart thing
Mozart was making fun of how Skrillex, you know uses technology to make his music instead of real
Yeah, even though this music is like super popular
Yeah
In my opinion and this is what Epic Rap Battle does very well.
one of the best diss tracks or one of the best methods to writing a diss track
is that it hits the soul
it can't be generic. It can't just be like you are ugly
yeah, it can be like something that you can apply to everyone you have to actually
Go in for the references and stuff and I think ERB does that very well
So, what rhymes with Koshy?
Step 4: Writing the lyrics and music
Now, Ella and I will be writing and rapping the lyrics of this rap battle
but when it comes to the music, we're going to need a little help
Hey guys, I'm currently in London and I am meeting
some of the people who are producing my music
so here we go
when we first got approached by Donna to do this Epic Rap Battles of History type skit
to kinda see how the ins and outs worked a bit
She was interested now
and she thought it would make a pretty good video
I looked into some of the Epic Rap Battles of HIstory and kinda saw what types of instruments they used
and then with the help of lovely Kitty's voice
I've made all of the instruments including the drums and the
and all of the synthesizers and all of the leads etc.
It was an added challenge for you to kind of, you know, take a vocal and turn that into an instrument
Yeah. obviously, I think I think like the vocal is the best instrument in a way because it's so diverse
But then you had to make that into you know an entire beat which was created out of
Synthesized instruments. Exactly.
So just do some kick drums. some snares
and some high hats
kick, snare, high hat
So bad! I'm not born to be a beatboxer
Literally just done don't be afraid to go crazy
You made it sound like really auto tuney.
No I made it sound like an old vintage record
Friend of enemies.
Our vocals?
Oh Yeah, just how I flex them basically
Was it bad? Tell the truth.
It was terrible
We were bad. We were totally bad.
okay play it
WHY?!?!?
My gosh
omg im so lame
true
lame
It wasn't terrible. It was how you were inexperienced basically
Yeah, so like the actual lyrics themselves weren't bad, which is the way you kind of delivered them.
So I had to go
Yeah, it was just timing
So I just had to quickly not quickly
But I had to go in and then manually adjust each individual where each word would hit
or anything like that
And then once that was done then everything sounded okay
we were talking about this off-camera actually how a lot of big artists will do that
like they'll go into the studio,
do something completely out of time and then the producer will take that and make it into like a
reasonable song
so actually when people say, oh I love this artist like
they love the producer. It's mostly the engineer
Yeah, they just don't really know
the the average audience member doesn't even know about you know the whole structure of
you have a producer, and the musician, and then a vocalist
You know, maybe session musicians. They just know about
The face of the brand
When ricegum makes a diss track or anyone else writes a diss track
I don't think the purpose is to be musical even with Epic Rap Battles of History
I don't think the purpose is to be musical. It's just to you know, it's for comedic effect and you know
it's comedy. So it doesn't really...
you still have some talent when it comes to writing bars and stuff
and there's a car over there
They still of the talent when it comes to writing and getting down nice bars and everything like that
but I think it's more focused on content-based
rather than sonically
Ricegum doesn't write his lyrics
In the beginning of creating this video,
I thought a lot about whether or not AI could replace the human performer
Why don't we watch robots playing piano?
Why do we go see live concerts when we can stay at home and listen to the perfectly recorded album
I foolishly scoured the internet for answers of what scientifically makes a good song. Sure
there is music theory to what chord progressions work well together
But there is no
strict formula to moving someone to tears or making them laugh
a big fundamental to music is telling a story
whether it be heartbreak, enjoying in a club, or how Elon Musk totally dominates Mark Zuckerberg
Though technology has elevated the common person's ability to create music
You can't replace factors such as talent, passion, and practice
When one does attempt to substitute tech for these, it often leads to cringe.
What do you do
when people don't now what we go through
they see my blonde hair, blue eyes, and class
But they don't know I have a really big...(heart/face)
We are going to film a music video
Epic Rap Battles of History style on a different video. Don't worry. I won't torture you by showing it to you
But yeah, if you want to go watch that, please go watch it. And also this song is on iTunes
Yeah, so I don't do patreon or anything like that
So if you don't want to support me in the independent artists in the video,
please go download the song and of course special thanks to Kittygotclaws and Idontsleep
for producing the music for this.
I Really appreciate them. They're very underrated music producers.
Their links will also be down in the description below. So yeah
Buy the song. I will see you guys next time. Stay Psyched