Epic Rap Battles of History

Epic Rap Battles of History, abbreviated to ERB or ERBoH, is a YouTube video series created by Peter Shukoff (Nice Peter) and Lloyd Ahlquist (EpicLLOYD). The series is hosted by pits famous historical and pop culture figures, either fictional or otherwise, against one another in a rap battle format. As of January 2014, Epic Rap Battles of History's main YouTube channel ERB has over 9.1 million subscribers, making it the 7th most subscribed channel on YouTube.

History
The idea for historical figures rapping against each other was conceived by Ahlquist, who gave the idea to Shukoff as an improvised show, which was titled "Check OneTwo"; as the two worked on improvisation skits, along with Zach Sherwin, who has appeared on the series. They were met with lots of difficulty at first and decided that it would fare much better as a YouTube series than an improv show. The first three rap battles were each shot on a $50 budget. On September 26, 2010, the first rap battle was uploaded to YouTube, featuring Shukoff as John Lennon and Ahlquist as Bill O'Reilly.

Before the web series even existed on YouTube, Nice Peter and EpicLLOYD recorded the very first song, which was a battle between Child's Play antagonist Chucky and actor Michael J. Fox. The song was freestyle and poorly made, so they never released it to the public and instead recorded their first official song for the first episode "John Lennon vs. Bill O'Reilly". The series' second installment, "Darth Vader vs. Hitler" skyrocketed the series' popularity, as well as Nice Peter's and EpicLLOYD's channels, making them YouTube stars.

The 15th episode, called the "Final Battle", was actually a season finale. Epic Rap Battles returned on December 8, 2011, hosted on their new channel (moving from NicePeter's channel), ERB, with Behind the Scenes on their second channel, ERB2.

Nice Peter and Maker Studios also created the official website for Epic Rap Battles of History, where the fans can vote on winners for each video, and read short comical first-person biographies by each character. EpicLLOYD has also started a new venture on YouTube called Dis Raps for Hire. People may send in requests for a dis rap against someone and Lloyd chooses among the many submissions to base his next video. Anyone can either send a submission to his email or post it in the comments under one of his dis rap videos.

On September 27, 2012, following a four-month pause after the "Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates" episode, a video was released on the series' YouTube channel where EpicLLOYD (voicing to an animation of Theodore Roosevelt) announced that new episodes would be released every two weeks until the Christmas holidays, starting with the 22nd episode "Frank Sinatra vs. Freddie Mercury" (aired on October 1, 2012). "Moses vs. Santa Claus" (aired on December 10, 2012) was the last battle before taking a break for the holidays.

On February 17, 2013, Epic Rap Battles of History was nominated for five Streamy Awards, winning four of them. Shukoff and Ahlquist also performed part of the "Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates" battle live.

On September 9, 2013, ERB uploaded a trailer video on their channel, which confirms that Epic Rap Battles of History would be returning on October 7, 2013 for a third season, with a third match-up between Adolf Hitler and Darth Vader. On October 14, released a second video with EpicLLOYD voicing Theodore Roosevelt, who announced the next episodes, that are scheduled on October 21, November 4 and 18, December 2 and 16. The 38th episode "Michael Jordan vs. Muhammad Ali" released one day later on December 3 than originally scheduled, due to technical difficulties.