Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 71 Epic Lloyd - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: May 29, 2015

Lloyd Ahlquist, known internet-wide as Epic Lloyd and the co-creator of one of YouTube’s most popular series, Epic Rap Battles of History, joins Rhett & Link this week to discuss his transformation from a gymnast and athlete to an improv comedian and rapper, how he met the love of his life on tour, and what ERB fans have to look forward to in the very near future. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. Joining us today at the round table of dim lighting is improv comedian, YouTube creator, co-creator of one of the most popular YouTube series of all time, Epic Rap Battles of History, that's right,

Lloyd Alquist, aka Epic Lloyd. We are very excited about this one, because as you might have known, we've been in a couple of these Epic Rap Battles of History ourselves. Is that like your bragging voice? This is my humble brag voice, I hate to admit it, but we've been in three epic rap battles of history.

Now, the thing, we love these guys, both Pete and Lloyd. You know, we talked to Pete on last season of Ear Biscuits and now we get to talk to the other half, to Lloyd. We love these guys for, you know, they're great guys. Nice Peter really is nice and Lloyd is really epic. He's also very nice. Nice, yeah, he's nice too. He's epically nice.

What if he was called Epic Nice Lloyd? Like he was trying to one up Nice Peter. Very weird. And that wouldn't be very nice, would it? But one of the reasons we love these guys is because I love to get involved in something that I know is going to be great. Yeah. You know, we spend all this time trying to get our videos the way know is going to be great. Yeah.

You know, we spend all this time trying to get our videos the way we want them to be and then we're still not satisfied 90% of the time. But so many times when you kind of get involved in somebody else's project, you're kind of like, well, I kind of think you should do it like this, but I'm not gonna speak up, I'm not gonna say anything. These guys knock it out of the park every single time.

Like Link said, one of the most successful, probably the most successful series. I mean, in terms of a series of this type, definitely the most successful musical series ever on the YouTubes. Yeah, and of course we were recently featured as Lewis and Clark in the latest, in one of the latest rap battles.

Did you hear that, Meriwether? I think they mean the brawl. So here's a clip of that. I feel the kid with his guns and you'll be verbally kicked in the nuts out cause your wheel buns. A teen mom carried you in your troops. Should've let the baby lean, put you in the papoose.

And if those native dudes knew what white dudes were gonna do, they would've stopped you in Dakota. They should totally sue. Why don't you go back to exploring Napoleon's old swamp? So we had a great conversation with Lloyd. He's already a good friend of ours. Whenever we get to hang out, guesting on a spot like that. Right, so you're gonna get to hear

the Lloyd half of the story of how this all came together with Epic Rap Battles of History and just Lloyd's background in general. A lot of people don't know that he didn't just start with improv comedy, but he's continued with that and actually has a hand

in an improv comedy theater here in Los Angeles. Yeah, and I really enjoy picking his brain about improv comedy. He said he wants to write a book about it. That's how passionate he is about it. He has like a formula. Yeah, he has a formula. So that amongst the whole backstory of Epic Rap Battles

and the organic, yes, I use the term, way that that kind of came about. Right. It's very fascinating. So stick around for that. You will enjoy it. We want to let you guys know, if you didn't already, we just released an album called Song Biscuits Volume 1.

Released it on iTunes last week. As you know, if you watch the Good Mythical Morning channel for the past few months, on Saturday, we have been doing a song biscuit, an original song based on your suggestions, oftentimes a collaboration with another YouTuber, and these songs were conceptualized and then written and performed all in about an hour or so. But you know what, it turned out to be a great set

of 15 different songs that you can go buy individually on iTunes or you can get the entire album for $8.99. And I think it's also available through Amazon if you are not an iTunes person. Yeah, so support our mythical endeavors by downloading that album and spend more time with us in your ears in between these Ear Biscuits. And we may or may not be animating a few of those.

I'm not gonna say. Well, I'm gonna say. But you might have just got the scoop on Ear Biscuits. We are gonna be doing that. We also wanna mention our sponsor EF College Break. You know, we've talked about them a few times. The travel experts at EF College Break make travel easy, affordable, and even more fun

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I'm actually, I'm planning a, you know, I'm not 18 to 28, I'm older than that, but I'm just trying to plan a little anniversary trip with my wife to Santa Barbara, and I can't figure out what to do there. If I could have somebody- How are you gonna go overseas? You're not. Right.

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Very much my pleasure. You're late, but that's okay. I know, I'm very sorry. Let's start with that. I'm so sorry I was late. What happened, man? Traffic? What's your LA excuse? I feel like...

We're so far apart. You can't... I know, I'm also... We're having this conversation I'm also talking to you As if like People are listening Which they are

But like It always changes It does a little bit My dad used to have This businessman voice On the phone He'd be like This is Burz Alquist

It was like Nothing like his real voice What did he do? He would be like Burz Alquist And he would talk like Burz Alquist Was he But would talk like- Bruce Alquist? Was he?

He was an Elvis impersonator, so- He's a Bruce Alquist. Little Bruce Albus. I was late because we were- He was a carpenter. Trying to do something else. Yeah, he's like a handyman, carpenter, plumber, or whatever you want to do. My dad does some of that stuff, too.

I always say my wife has a very like super sweet phone voice. And then she'll like turn to me and it's like a totally different. Where's that phone voice? It's gone. I was on the phone. Why were you talking to me? Talk to me in that sweet phone voice. I definitely change the tone of my voice when I'm like assuming a certain status, you know,

like if you have to sound like you're in charge or if you're like having to sound like you're, you know, charismatic or whatever. But right now you sound like the friend Lloyd and that's what we want. Okay. Well, don't bring out the enemy Lloyd because I am so. Yeah. Did you ever have one of those friends who started talking lower, but you could tell he was trying to talk lower? Like in puberty years?

Yeah, well, like, it just happened in high school. We have a couple of friends, no names will be named. Bill. Who, like, we went to high school with him and then I saw him a couple years after high school and he was talking like this. Affecting his voice. Really trying to talk low.

No, I don't know anybody who's done that. I definitely like if I'm talking like, like, I don't know. I talk like more hood if I'm hanging around with like a bunch of my hood friends or whatever. Right. I definitely go more southern. Yeah.

Like even when I just said my dad, I said dad. Yeah. And it was almost that bad. My dad. Because that's how he kind of talks. My dad, he doesn't affect his voice when he's talking on the phone like your dad,

but he can't get off the phone. That's the thing my dad has is at the end of the phone conversation, when you're just supposed to say bye, my dad's like. One more thing. He doesn't say English either. He speaks an alien language that is a long goodbye. Like you're me, we're like, okay, dad, love you, bye.

Okay, dad, love you, thanks a lot for the call. Okay, all right. Okay, thanks, well. Well. You okay? Yep. I've gotta go, I'm on the phone. All right, bye, okay.

I'm not exaggerating. He's not exaggerating. Still doing it. In fact, he let me listen to it one time. I put it on speaker. He put it on speaker, and I was like, because he had told me this, and I was like, there's no way that he, and then he did just what he just did. And he doesn't stutter or anything.

It's just at the end of a conversation. It's just. That's got to be a Southern thing, though. That's definitely. I think it's isolated to Link's dad, actually. Southern father. Just Southern dad. You know, I told dead actually. Southern father. Just dead, southern dead. I, you know, I told you this,

I wanna get into the mechanisms of writing the epic rap battles. Cause I mean, as we tell you every time, we're like super thankful to be involved in these things with you and Pete. Glad to have you. It's always amazing. It's amazing to be a guest on something that's like,

oh, 10 million views right out of the gate. You know, that's an amazing thing to just know that, oh, there's a pressure that's off, actually, I feel like, because there's so much of what we do that, you're just like, okay, well, we're working so hard on this, is it gonna be worth it? I mean, do you get that sense at this point with the success of an epic rap battle that it's like you're able to release and say, all right, people love this.

There's a baseline view that it's tremendous. Does that take a pressure off or does that add more pressure? I don't know. I mean, I think it's a little bit of both. I feel like it's a constant. It makes the pressure constant, I think, which maybe relieves it overall, you know, because it's like, we don't do that many videos. So we have to put, you know, a lot, a lot of time into each one.

So we just try to give all of them everything we have. Definitely some do better than others, for sure. I mean, there's like 10 million viewed disparity. Thank you. Thank you. I just turned into your dad there for a second. A difference. So it definitely, there's disparity in some of them,

but I don't think about is this one going to be good or is that one going to be good? I think more about the characters or if we have guests like you guys, and thank you for those nice things you said. It's always, I mean, working with you guys has been so cool. When we first started the battles,

we were like, Oh, let's put together like an ensemble cast and we'll just keep using the same people over and over again. And we like thought about casting and doing an audition and stuff, but it's kind of become this very organic kind of ensemble cast that we work with. So it's really nice.

So I just try to focus on if there are special guests like you guys, I try to focus on making you guys the best song that we possibly can. And that takes the pressure off of like the world stuff because it just localizes it a little bit. And then, yeah. But there's also, I mean, there's your own self-imposed standard. I really get a sense that you guys are, you have this internal standard and I think it's,

I don't know, I've just gotten the impression it's more about that. Like I know you guys work so hard on crafting each of these things. Yeah, we definitely push each other and we definitely know we only make 12 battles a year. So like we have to do it really, really well. So just start to walk us through the process.

Like when we were there recording the vocals, like we were hanging out before we went in to do the Lewis and Clark vocals and right now we're just kind of eyeing the whiteboard and trying to decipher the process because it was, okay, obviously there's like this collaborative place where somebody's writing on a whiteboard

and there's like different lines that are up there. Like there are comedic concepts. How does a song start? We do a ton of research. First we do a ton of work. First we decide on the matchup, obviously. And is that always a suggestion? Always a suggestion, but it's kind of easy now because there's so many suggestions that if usually there's something in our brain, we just can go and find it.

Search. You search for it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, I mean, it's a very nice thing, but it's always from the audience. But there's certainly a lot to choose from. So we first decide on that. Then we decide usually on a beat.

The beat will influence the style of writing. We try to find a beat that feels right for the, you know. Well, let's talk Lewis and Clark then. Yeah. Like picking that beat. Well, first of all, you picked Lewis and Clark versus Bill and Ted. Let's just walk through this one

since we're so fond of it. Cool. Like, you, how did you pick it? The beat? No. Let's, with the concept. Oh, we picked it because. Are you in a room? You and Pete? No.

Are you on the phone? Are there other there's other people at this point? Well, welcome. We'll go to the studio. That's where we usually work. You know, we hang out there. And, you know, as we approach when we map out like the production time or months or whatever, we have a couple of weeks in there that we decide on matchups, decide on beats and stuff like that. And so during that time, we just kind of brainstorm.

And there's usually you usually do about six at a time. And so during that time, we just kind of brainstorm. And there's usually, you usually do about six at a time. And there's usually about three that we've been talking about and didn't get to do the previous season or whatever that like kind of fit in. Or one of us will have our favorites that we'll just try to get back into the, you know. And when you're making that decision, how much of it is based on, oh, people are going to love this or we're gonna love this. And the reason I ask that is because when you think about Lewis and Clark and Bill and Ted, I mean, first of all, in general history,

you're already dealing with things that maybe a lot of kids out there are not gonna know about to begin with, right? Yeah, yeah. But then when you're dealing with like a reference like Bill and Ted, you're also kind of talking to people. America. Who are Americans, who are 30 years old and up, right?

Yeah. Technically. Yeah. Well, I assume you started with Bill and Ted. You were like chomping at the bit to do a Lewis and Clark rap battle? Well, we knew you guys were going to play Lewis. We knew Bill and Ted versus Lewis and Clark probably since the beginning of season three. Oh, really?

It was always going to be you guys from the very beginning. That's a fact. Really? Yeah. So the fact that you guys are playing Lewis and Clark, we're like, oh, yeah? It was always gonna be you guys. From the very beginning. That's a fact. Really? Yeah, so the fact that you guys were playing Lewis and Clark, we're like, oh yeah, that's gonna be great. So that made that really exciting to do. But you chose a rap battle about Bill and Ted and then paired them conceptually with Lewis and Clark

as like the first step. What do you mean? Like you chose to pit them against each other the characters yeah yeah yeah for sure we chose a match-up first but that match-up has been around for a long time is what I'm saying so the match-up has been around and so like me and Pete knew we could probably do Bill and Ted and you guys as Lewis and Clark was super easy um so yeah I mean yeah it's it's like a specific – is it – we try to do 50-50. We try to like stay true to ourselves and see what's going to be funny for us and not try to get too pandery, you know, in terms of like, oh, like we don't do like the latest flash in the pan.

You know, usually the rule is if they're going to be still remembered in 50 years from now, even if it's just by a specific pocket of people, like then we'll do it. Lewis and Clark are obviously, you know gonna be there. And Bill and Ted, there's, I mean, Keanu Reeves is still very popular and that other guy, whoever. Did you see John Wick as part of your reconnaissance? Who? That new Keanu movie. Okay, there's my answer. No, I saw it.

I heard it was good. It was good? I read it was good. It was not as good as it was made out to be. Oh, sorry. But it was better than people expected it to be before they wrote that it was better than you expected it to be.

Right, exactly. Oh yeah. Was it better than Jupiter Rising with Channing Tatum? Haven't seen that. I haven't seen that either. Take that Channing Tatum. So you finally get around to making this one and like, you know, we're basically just sitting on the doorstep,

just waiting to come in and like record another one. We didn't even have to ask guys. We got more, we got more. And I think I told you this, but one of the first books that I remember reading as a kid and crying in my bedroom alone when I was done reading it was a book about Lewis and Clark. When they finally made it. When they finally made it. Wow, you cried? I cried. was done reading it was a book about Lewis and Clark.

When they finally made it. When they finally made it. Why, you cried? I cried. I have never cried because I've never cried reading a book. I mean, grade school kid in my, like, I don't know. It was just, it was a long book. It was a part of my life for a long time

because I'm a slow reader. Yeah. And they finally made it. You were finally done with the book after 18 months. No one told me they had made it, Lloyd. I mean, I had no one reader. Yeah. And they finally made it. You were finally done with the book after 18 months. No one told me they had made it, Lloyd. I mean, I... No one spoiled their alert? You're the history of United States.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spoiler alert. They made it. You were in the suspense the whole time. Why would they have a book about these guys if they didn't make it? They connected. And really good try.

It was called... Really connected with me. And they died. Well, he, I mean... It did get sad. The suicide was not part of the book. It is sad. Like my grade school level version.

You learned that from Ken Burns. It was a little sad. I learned that from the Epic Rap Battle lyrics. Nice. Oh, you knew that from Ken Burns. I learned that from Ken Burns. I didn't know that until we started doing the research. I didn't know he'd killed himself until we started reading about it and stuff.

So then you sit down and you start writing this thing. Yeah. I start. Pete and I obviously have very different – not obviously. We have very different styles of writing in almost everything that we do. Okay. So Pete – well, the first thing we'll do is just start brainstorming in a perfect world. Now that we're into the production, like we're sort of – our head's all over the place and we're like piecing things together. But like when we come into it relaxed and good, we'll have me and Pete and sometimes Zach and Mike, another writer of ours, and we'll just toss around ideas.

What are the things that you would want to know about Bill and Ted? What are the top 10 things you think of right away? What are the middle 10 things? We have this kind of SAT, ACT way of writing things, which is like three tiers of jokes. And in ACT or SATs, you have like three tiers of questions. One that everybody will get. Mid-level B is like, you know, a couple of people will get.

And then, I mean, like more average people get. And then C is like a really niche, only super fans will get. Now, let me ask you, are you describing it that way to us? Or is that how you talk amongst yourselves when writing too? Like we've got our three tiers

and are there three tiers on a whiteboard or is this just? We don't get that structured with it. That's just what we have in our brain and we talk about it that way when we talk about the writing process. You wanna be able to categorize a joke to know that if you've got a whole song full of third tier jokes

or you wanna even dispersion of jokes. Yeah, you wanna be able to, if someone's never seen Bill and Ted, you want them to be able to understand from watching it and seeing it that it's funny. But then you also have to have those jokes that the Bill and Ted super uber fans will love. Yeah.

And then the middle of the road jokes that like, Oh, I'm kind of familiar with that. Yeah, I remember that. Oh, that's that Rufus guy. Oh yeah, I remember him. That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we'll list out the things.

Because you know you're going to get the Sacagawea like joke in there. That's Sacagawea? It's just a question how. One out the things. Because you know you're going to get the Sacagawea joke in there. Nuts Sacagawea? It's just a question, how? One of the best. One of the best. Nuts Sacagawea puns. Yes, if it's one of the best.

So you're starting with comedic concepts categorized on a whiteboard. There's no rhyming pairs. I mean, I saw it for another one. Yeah, not yet. No couplets yet usually you know we'll just kind of be like okay these are fun this is good this is good this is good yeah you should know that and then out of that usually some sort of rhyme will come out like if you say Sacagawea someone be like what rhymes that's a fun word what rhymes with that usually

we'll do that for a while and then break away and start writing on our own like writing jokes together crafting jokes do you divide up who's writing what are you like you're both working on the same thing um independently um it's gotten really really varied like your guys's verse like in the in past songs like um um in the ninja turtles like p like Pete wrote the first part of the artists. And then I wrote like the middle part and then he wrote the back end and I wrote the front end of Ninja Turtles and he wrote the front end. And then the other guys are like punching in jokes and punching up jokes. And like anybody in the room could be saying something, Dante will say something or, you know. How many people are in that process at that point when you're in the room?

Four or five. Yeah, usually four or five. And then usually it comes down to me and Pete one night late, like just punching it out and getting it done. Okay, I'm really going to dig into the, when you go into the room by yourself, because, I mean, it's fascinating for us because we also do this, you know? And first of all, we're not going to both go into a room

and write the same verse because then that's double work. Yeah. We're going to divide this thing up. Yeah. Yeah. So you're a little crazy there. I mean, Rhett and I don't want to create any more work.

If he's going to write something, I'm for sure not going to also write it. Right. And risk it not being used. Well, we don't do it that way. Like, we'll divide it up, especially if I'm playing a character and Pete's playing a character. We'll spend a lot of time writing each our own character. Right. But Pete does a lot more of the mixing and a lot more of the like costuming and stuff than I do.

So I – at times I'll need to carry a little bit more weight on the writing and just the writing side. Okay. And then it always changes once you go into the studio to record it anyway. So I have – when I used to write back in the, and we used to butt heads a lot more with everybody, I used to write these jokes and really fall in love with them and really have them be precious. And it would be like a big argument when we were trying to change them. And now I write things, and I think about 85% of it will stay. At first, as it gets down farther and farther, it's closer. But we've changed entire back ends of the song in the studio on the mic in the headphones

just because it just wasn't feeling right for some reason or just wasn't going right. Okay, but when you're in there writing your piece, you wrote the beginning of Lewis and Clark. You can't be starting with Lewis and Clark. You can't be starting with Lewis and Clark. Yeah. I keep going. They cut a path through MC like a walking apart.

That used to be, we blazed a trail, it used to be blazer trails, but then we used blazer trail later on in the song. We're like, oh, we gotta change the front one. I was like, oh yeah. You can't blaze twice. You can't blaze twice. So they cut a path through MC like a walking apart.

Yeah, that almost works better now. Yeah, yeah. So that's what I wanna know, because you're sitting there, you've got jokes. That's how we start too. We have jokes. We used to fall in love with like, that sounds good, and then no one cared if it wasn't funny.

But the thing that you got, I'm always in awe you guys, is how amazing the flows are. I mean, there's the level of artistry. It's so difficult to bake comedy into something that sounds so legitimate. I mean, it's not comedy music, it's, I mean, you're making rap music. Usually you have to make a compromise. Yeah.

In one direction or the other. And so how does that work? I mean, there's this, I mean, I know, because I've had to learn it, I've actually tried to do it a lot. Right. And that's create something that has an amazing flow that I would actually sound like an actual rapper.

Hell yeah. I wanna see that comment. Yeah. Because those were my heroes as a kid, rappers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just want one comment and thousands to say, well, that was actually a good flow. That was good flow.

But you, I mean, you, you, you obviously give a lot, you devote a lot of effort to that because it, it shows, but how do you do that? I mean, you're sitting there saying. Well, I, I mean, I always, whenever I started rapping as an escape from comedy. So I never considered my, I never wanted to do comedy rap. And I consider the rap battles comedy, but no more comedy than any other rap battle is. It's just more understandable and digestible because everybody understands the context. So I don't really consider myself a comedy rapper.

If you look at any of the original music that I do, it's all hip hop and it's none of it's really funny. So I do write it just like a regular rap song. And then, you know, in in in coming up with the flows, I think that's the that's the kind of the art of being an emcee and being, you know, it's like skiing or slaloming or something or surfing or figuring out how you want to like the beat is that double dutch, you know, and then you just got to figure out what your woo up is once you get inside of there and then uh so i just that's why the beat is so important and and it's it's hot it's tough to write the track without the beat first because that can start to sound really really like repetitive after a while so and back in the day when we used to write you can hear it too we were you know we've grown as you get but you can hear the jokes split it up. You can hear it's like set up punchline, then set up punchline.

And now as we've evolved, you get longer verses that kind of flow and they're all blended together a little bit better. Right. When you can get that, I mean, boy. Back in the day, we would have maybe three set up lines for one punchline. And you just hear it. It's just like throwaway. It's like, oh, just to get there.

But it's interesting that I hear you saying that it's not even, you're not even doing setup punchline anymore, really. I mean, there's some of those in there, but that's not really the approach at all. Everything's a joke. I mean, everything's a purposeful. Everything's purposeful.

Yeah, everything's, it's punchline, punchline. That's how we do it. One interesting thing is, Link, you may have forgotten this, but I remember the first time Pete sent us the Super Mario Brothers and Wright Brothers, and we were the Wright Brothers. Yeah.

And he sent us the lyrics, and he sent us the lyrics and he was like, he kinda had a little bit of a, you know, let me know if you have any thoughts or kind of thing. And so we were just kind of assuming that this is probably like a lot of the collaborative videos that we had done in the past.

We kind of wanted to like do our due diligence to kind of make it our own and that kind of thing. So I didn't know what he meant by give us any notes. And so we like kind of came back with, we think we should probably say this here, this here, like having no insight really into like the machine that had, and it was a little bit less of a developed machine at that time.

Sure. But I can't remember his response word for word, but it was basically, no, we're not gonna do that. And now hearing this conversation, of course, we would never in a million years would we have done that on the second or the third, because it's gone through this process and it's gotten to be exactly what you guys wanna do.

But it was more, we were kind of approaching it from that, oh yeah, some YouTubers collaborating together. We should probably give our thoughts on this just because we're being a part of it. But now there's like this, going into that process when we get that, you know, your guys' demo track. I'm like, how can I make it

as much like what they have presented? It's gonna be me being, you know, Clark. Yeah, it's like, don't change, you know, it's like a director that, a really good director who- You can trust the script. You know you're not supposed to change the script because that's how they work. I mean, that is how you guys put so much into it. Yeah.

It's, there's no need to, it's not, we're not going to riff on this thing. We're not going to improv our way into something better. That's for sure. Yeah. I mean, we, well, thank you for all those nice things. It's really cool of you guys to say. I think that's always been our goal is to i mean to we understand how busy most people that we work with are so like and i've been on the opposite side of

that when someone sends you something you're like yeah i can't really work with this and now i feel really awkward that i have to kind of go in there and do this so our goal was always to like try to blow people away with the demo but when you you're writing for Snoop Dogg. Yeah, man. I mean, at that point, you can't, I mean, we learned a lesson from that. We learned a big lesson from that. Really?

And it was like, I don't know what, it was empowering, I guess. Because we wrote the lyrics, but we never sent him a demo. And he was playing Moses against Santa. Which is, what a bizarre I love that pairing I was scratching my head a little bit on that one

but okay you know whatever but we didn't send him a demo we just sent him the lyrics because we were like that's Snoop Dogg he'll figure

he wants to do and he was like you sent him the instrumental we sent him the instrumental and the lyrics and we sent him the Santa part and it was just holes

of what his part was so there's no vocals for his part right and and he he was joking around i was like these my these dudes are messing with me they didn't even send me a demo they just make me freestyle on this thing so we were like we took out of that oh and it was like a sort of a light bulb moment like of course like so like as least work as a guy that's that busy has has got to be send him that and then if he wants to change it of course he'll change it but like so he came in and that was the the flow that he had come up with or he asked for the demo later he didn't we never got to track with him he just went to his own private basement studio with his guy and the send us back and worked it out and so

it was still awesome yeah but like i think he he was just he just thought that was funny that we didn't send it to him. We were like, oh man, we didn't wanna step on your toes. But you never did. You heard this after he had come up with the flow and everything. Yeah. So you put Snoop to work. Well, we did make a demo. You put him to work. We made a demo on it.

But you didn't send it to him. We didn't send it to him. You scared me. You scared us. I'm not gonna work. I can totally get that. So you put Snoop to work. I am, man, gotta do it. And was his better? Oh man, I mean. Just can totally get that. So you put Snoop to work. I am, man, gotta do it. And was his better?

Oh man, I mean. Just don't answer it. Yeah. I didn't ask that question. It was so Snoop. You have to say yes. We got it on tape that when we first, they sent it over and it was like,

we downloaded this file and we're like, we're gonna hear Snoop saying our stuff. Yeah. And we have the whole video. We're gonna put it in the BTS, but I don't know, we didn't get in there for some reason, but it was just us being like, rawr!

So for Lewis and Clark, you get to this point where you know that, all right, they've discovered a whole bunch of stuff. Uh-huh. And so what are you going to do with that? Yeah, we thought in that sort of roundtable discussion I was talking about, we thought it would be cool for them to list off a bunch of stuff. And then I went online and I did a i did like a search for i don't know lewis and clark animals and there was like this one page that listed off all the animals that they discovered and it was really it was like a long you're like i bet somebody's right weasel eagle yeah and then beaver also rhymed with weasel and eagle, I think. Yeah. Because it does, man.

It does. So that's, so Zach, the guy who played Einstein, he's, he's like the most wordsmith of us all. Like he's the best in terms of like, like syllables and the crafting of a word that comes together. So for that section, I sent him that link and the idea. And then he sent back like three different versions of a list. And then I took what he took, what he wrote, and I like kind of worked it into the beat. And like so it changed probably like 30 percent more. And so that's how that is really nice.

It's like a handing off of, you know, the ball to each other quite a bit. So it's really it's a nice collaborative process. other quite a bit so it's really it's a nice collaborative process we want to get back to where we want to go back to the the Lloyd the pre epic rap battles of history Lloyd to figure out how you became this guy okay and that takes us back to New Hampshire yeah yeah we're born there no I were born in Staten Island New York okay mm-hmm so I was born in New York and I moved to New Hampshire when I was like three or two. And I spent like all of high school and up through high school, graduated high school from New Hampshire.

And then I moved around. Two brothers, my older brother Kirk and my younger brother Travis. So the middle brother, what's the dynamic there? I got lost in the mix. Lloyd lost in the mix. Lost's the dynamic there um i kind of got lost in the mix lloyd lost in the mix in the mix i got to be a little bit of both because my younger brother is eight years younger than me oh so i was the younger brother for like the first eight years so that was cool i have great relationship with both of those guys they're great um i'm gonna be an uncle soon my little brother's having a baby baby girl so i'm gonna go down he lives in um how florida how old is the

older brother than you I mean Kirk is a year and a half older than me so was he the one who was like bringing the rap tapes in the house nope no oh really not at all that's not my brother Kirk um how did I get into rap I got into rap I'm not I'm not my memory is not real good and I don't I'm not like I'm not there's like different types of people, you know? And I'm not a cataloger. I can't remember any words to any lyrics of any song. I wrote a line about that.

The only words to rhymes I remember are mine. And I forget those a lot too. So I was into all kinds of music. And then I really started getting into rap probably like in college oh yeah when I started doing improv we we did it we did one like little improv game that was like freestyle rap game we're like what if we freestyled rap that would be so crazy and amazing so we started doing that but it was cut but it was comedy first it was but then it became very quickly about like freestyling and cyphers at parties.

You know what I mean? And then because we would do these freestyle sessions, like other guys who were rhymers would start to hang out. So I would start hanging out with those type of guys more. So were you a performer from a younger age? Was that like something in your blood? That was a thing? I played Bilbo Baggies in the sixth grade play. Oh, really?

Yeah. Hairy feet and everything? Yeah. Well, it was low bite. I played Bilbo Baggies in the sixth grade play. Oh, what? Oh, really? Yeah. Hairy feet and everything? Yeah. Well, it was low-bite, so I didn't get any hairy feet. And then it was like makeup. I did get that from my older brother. Like he was in high school plays, and so then I started doing plays.

I was a gymnast all throughout college and high school. So I was much more of like a jock than a- Rings? Yeah, rings. You look like- I can see you on some rings. Pommel horse? Mm-hmm, yep.

Really? Yep. Dang, what could you do on rings right now if we had a set? Almost nothing. I think I could probably do a handstand, that's about it. That's not like, it's not like shooting a basketball, it's not like you could be like 55 years old and you're like, yeah, I can still shoot.

You like, the rings is tough. Not really, yeah, it's tough. So you did that from a young age if you were like doing the gymnast thing. It's like kid indoctrination. Yeah. It's like it owns your life if you're like a, you're trying to be an Olympian, right? Yeah. Well, it's definitely much more like a, I think you practice a lot.

I practice a lot more than like most sports. It's just like after school, you play for a couple hours and you go home. This was like we would have two days in like after school, you play for a couple hours and you go home. This was like, we would have two a days in summer. And we, you know, it was like from three to like nine every day and Saturdays too. And then like, you know, once you got into college, we didn't really get Christmas. And, you know, it was intense. It was division one.

So it was- Where'd you go to school? UMass Amherst. Oh, really? And do you, as a gymnast, do you do do everything or is it like no he's he's the rings guy i was an all-arounder up until i got in and once you get to college they start to specialize you but there is a specialized one called all around so guys who especially do that i started i hurt my that's how i ended up getting into comedy as i blew my knees out

so i was able i had extra time to take like the acting classes that I always wanted to take. Was it just like a matter of deteriorating over time? Was there like an injury? Yeah, I had a pretty gnarly accident. Tell us about it in detail. Well, your knees are like a degenerative thing. So they're attached. Your knee is definitely the Achilles heel of the human body. So it's attached by- What's the Achilles heel? It's the knee.

Achilles heel of the human body. So it's attached by- And what's the Achilles heel? It's the knee. It's the knee. But once you hurt your knee, it's easier to hurt it again. So I started, I was a wrestler. There was at one point in high school when I would wake up at five in the morning, go do diving, then do school, then wrestle after school, and then go from wrestling practice

to gymnastics practice. So in the state tournament of wrestling, this guy shot in on my knee and hit it sideways. Oh, gosh. And it's called a subluxation. So it slid out of the socket and then back in. Then I pinned his ass and couldn't move on because my knees swole up. So it made you mad. It hurt that bad that you were like, he is not going to beat me.

He's not. He's going to change my life trajectory. I know. But he's not going to win this match. It totally happened. it's really weird uh but then that that that's then i started then i hurt my knee in gymnastics once and then in college i was doing this trick where you it's on floor you you know what a round off is it's like forward momentum into back it's like a cartwheel where your legs come together so you do a round off and then it's called a whip back and which is like a really fast flip and then you do another flip out of that.

But I rolled my ankle in the whip back. So I rolled my right ankle in the whip back. And then I flung over. And I remember in the midair, I was like, oh, that hurt my ankle. Thank God that wasn't my knee. I literally thought that. And then when I landed, I just landed side. My whole knee popped out.

So I have two screws in my left knee. So I rehabbed that for a year and i was on crutches for like seven months and then i got back and i got back competing again then i blew my right knee i tore my acl my right knee on parallel bars so then after that that was like how do you tear a knee on a parallel bar dismounting i was doing a like a layout with like a double twisting layout off and so I landed and I was still spinning and you kind of turn into the ground.

It hurt. It was just very demoralizing. Yeah, after everything you'd been through with the recovery and then it's the other knee even. It's not even the same knee. Yeah. It was tough. But that's what opened up everything for comedy. But how low

did it get at that moment i mean is it like what were you planning on doing was this was it was it a it was it was it was i it was almost a blessing because i wasn't going to be in the olympics you know what i mean like i wasn't the coaching wasn't good enough i hadn't been doing it long enough i didn't have enough you know just you know at that point whether you're going to be in the olympics right um so it was almost a blessing like because it was taking up so much of my time, and I didn't really love it. You know what I mean? It's like you almost do it out of obligation.

You do it out of lifestyle because it's kind of what you've always done. It's your world. Yeah, but I didn't love it. And then I started doing this improv stuff, and I could focus on that. But what was that choice? Was that a switch in tracks, or were you just doing that on the side? So it was like, well. I was doing it on the side, but when I got hurt, I had more time.

You know what I mean? Because you rehab, but like your practice is like six hours a day. But if you're hurt, you know, you rehab for an hour or two, but I could do plays. I could do this improv stuff at night. You know, it was like a show at seven or something, I could do it. So I just was able to do, I was doing these improv shows on crutches. Really? That's how I met my-

Were you like incorporating the crutch into all of your characters and bits? Yeah, a little bit, I would. A little bit. Before I got done. Were you already kind of funny? Like a guy that was just like, oh, amongst my friends, I'm a funny guy.

Maybe I should do improv or I want to be funny, so I'm going to do improv. That is a funny thing to say. I never thought about doing comedy ever in high school. I was like a talkative and charismatic guy, probably a little bit funny. But I never thought – I always thought I would be like serious acting and stuff. And then I did this improv exercise in a college class and it went really well. And then we went to an improv show that night as a class and this kid was – happened to sitting next to me being like, oh, you should join this group. They just had an audition on campus.

So I went and did that and that's how I got into doing comedy. I never – yeah. What do you have that makes you good at improv personally? What do you have that makes you good at improv personally? I have – there are two types of improvisers. There are like two categories. There's heart players and head players. And head players use their mind to protect their heart and they make funny, witty, sharp jokes.

They're intellectual players. And I'm very, very pure heart and character player. So I'm not, like I said, I don't remember lyrics. I can't make a lot of deep references or anything, but I can react and emote and play pretty honestly. And I'm pretty physical and I think that helps.

And definitely Rap Battles has helped me be a lot better at characters, which usually plays pretty good too. I don't mean to make this about us, but I'm just trying to process, having never taken And definitely Rap Battles has helped me be a lot better at characters, which usually plays pretty good too. Oh yeah. I don't mean to make this about us, but I'm just trying to process, having never taken an improv class, but talking to a number of people who come from that world,

I'm very fascinated with it. Cause it, I mean, we do a lot of improv and we just kind of feel our way through it. And even in deciding how we wanna take a particular episode, we're having a conversation this morning about who should lead and who should react depending on the thing. So I'm just like, okay, who's the head and who's the heart?

That's pretty, I mean, there's a blur to the line, obviously. Yeah. But if you have to categorize us, it's pretty obviously, Rhett's more of a head guy and I'm more of a heart guy. Yeah. The thing about, I don't, but I'm also the guy who remembers all the lyrics.

I don't think that, I think that's a totally different thing. That's a totally different part of my brain. But if you tell me to remember a line or you gotta deliver this in this way or I'm gonna zing them with this one, so I'm gonna flop. But if you're like. It's like a rap he learned in second grade.

Right off the top. But if it's a. Which I can't do grade, he can- Right off the top. Yeah. But if it's a- Which I can't do at all. Just give me an, I'll just, I'll give you an honest reaction and like maybe it'll be funny. You know, it's kind of a, it's like even when I said that voice,

was that funny? Yeah. Well, it's like this, it's like this thing. I don't know. I almost wrote a book about improv one time. There's like head and heart and character and self. So- Are you making this stuff up?

Is this your, are these your principles that would be in your book? Yeah. Really? Yeah. The head and the heart, this is your thing? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I think so. That's what I would. Well, I wrote a curriculum. I own this comedy theater and there's a training center and I wrote a curriculum for the, there's like six levels of classes there. And it's changed a little bit since then, but I wrote the first curriculum and you have six levels of improv and you go through it's, you know, but head and heart and character itself. So the other thing, I don't know how much improv you've seen, but like some people play, some people play themselves on stage most of

the time. Like they're like a version of like a Kevin Costner or Harrison Ford, you know, like the improvisers are the same way. Like they're not gonna, they don't change the way they improvise too much. And then there's guys like, and like, I think I'm more this way. You'd probably be this way too. It's like much more character based, like bigger. Shapeshifter. Yeah. Like a Johnny Depp or like a Tom Hardy or somebody like that who like really goes the

other way. But you can have a guy who's like a character player, which is big and out there, but he can also play from his mind. You know what I mean? Which is what I think probably you would do if you're like a fairly cerebral guy, but does characters, that's what you would do. See, I don't think I'm a mind guy at all. I think I'm a heart guy.

Heart? Full of heart? I'm all heart! Or whatever's gonna come out. The more calculated it is, the more it probably isn't gonna work for me. That's cool. If that's what you mean. Yeah, maybe that's true. We'll have to get you guys in an improv class

and then we'll find out. Well, we definitely talked about it because almost everything we do is just pure instinct and not, and it's just, if there's any sort of curriculum, it's just something that we discussed amongst ourselves. Well, you guys have been together. And trying to discover. You guys have been friends for so long. Yeah.

That's so valuable. That helps, right. That's so valuable. So I wanna, cause you know, I don't think a lot of people, a lot of people may not know that, that you own this comedy theater. So this is a big part of who you are in your life. So.

And it really highlights that pivotal moment where you switched over to kind of go back to that point in the story. Yeah, so you're trying improv for the first time and then where does that go? I met, so I was in college. I auditioned for this improv thing on crutches. I met a guy named Aaron Krebs,

who I still work with today, own the theater with today, and got into this improv group, started improvising. And this is where? At UMass. Okay, UMass. And at UMass, the first year there, I was like hanging out with all the jocks and all like the jock guys because that's where I was. And I didn't really, it never felt like I fit in. I just didn't get it.

I didn't have, like they would like bust each other's balls all the time and really, you know how, I don't know. There's certain people like they could be friends with you, but they're kind of like, they're macho kind of. I didn't get, I didn't like that. So I ended up meeting these improv dudes and we got along really well. And I finally had this click of friends and we started like doing these shows and doing a show every week. And the audiences grew and grew and grew. And then we started touring a little bit and there was six of us guys who really clicked six of us. And so after I got hurt in college, that it was my junior year at the end of the year, three of those six guys were going to graduate. And then the group was kind of going to fall apart. So I was like, F this. So I, me and Aaron got drunk on a 12 pack of Corona and he was

going to go to, um, New York city and like take a job at like a bank or something for like 40 grand a year, which at that time was a lot. But I was like, man, we got to get out of here. We got to get out of here. What are we doing? Let's go do this. So we're like, all right. So I dropped out of college, convinced two other guys to drop out of college. And then the other three guys who graduated, we all got in a van that summer. We packed all of our stuff into a van and we drove together to Chicago in a van, rented a big house. You talked all the five other guys, three of which were graduating. They needed direction.

The other two needed to be redirected. Yeah. And so you were like. Let's go. Did you get any phone calls from angry parents? No, everybody was super supportive. Everybody was like, I think they knew. They could tell there was something special about that thing.

What was your name? Because you had a name. My name, Agent Snake Eyes. Well, I've met met the whole group but you personally had a name yeah it was mission it's mission it still is mission improbable yeah mission improbable mi's west side comedy theater mission improbable's west side comedy theater agent snake eyes agent snake eyes you better believe it gi joe reference i didn't know you all had to have individual names yeah again and that's more of a rapper thing. Yeah, you know. And yeah, and I was

when, that was me, like when I was in the beginning, like now guys have names like Agent Knuckle Sandwich or Pool, like Agent Ham and Cheese or whatever. But I was like, no man! The show's funny enough. We should have cool names like Agent Snake Eyes or Falcon or Hurricane or Hatchet Face or something. As long as it was a G.I.

Joe reference. Yeah, man, Agent Destro. So you moved into one house, one big house. Zartan, that's Agent Zartan. I'll be your dreadnought, sir. Oh, yeah. And when you get to Chicago, did anybody know anything about Chicago? No.

You just knew this was like the improv capital of... Yeah, we had a festival at our college and we brought a group from Chicago there to perform and do workshops. And we met a woman named Liz Allen and she became like our guru. And so we moved there, became a – like started studying. We did like group meetings. We had like a Monday business meeting and then a Wednesday rehearsal and a Friday rehearsal.

And we would all take classes at IO or Second City. We just lived and breathed and did everything. And how are you paying for this at that point? Working, waiting tables. One guy was like an assistant to an EMT. One guy did a temp job. we just lived and breathed and did everything. And how are you paying for this at that point? Working, waiting tables. One guy was like an assistant to an EMT. One guy did a temp job. And what were you doing?

I was waiting tables at a restaurant, bartending. And then one by one we moved to Chicago. And then some of the guys peeled off. They're not all with us anymore. But me and Aaron, the guys who started the thing, I saw them last night, did shows, like you guys, I've known that guy longer than I haven't known him now. And then-

And that's how I met Pete. So after we were in Chicago- Oh, you met Pete in Chicago. Met him in Chicago, freestyle rapping on a porch in the house. Yeah, Pete was like, he was just itinerant, right? He could have been anywhere from what I remember of his story.

Yeah, he was- Reference that air biscuit if you want to. He was trying to figure things out for himself at the same time. He was in Chicago studying comedy like a lot of guys. And I didn't even really know him at first as a musician. I didn't know he was a music guy at all. But he was on a porch. What?

This house that we had, it was like this 1615 West Byron. It was like we would throw these giant improv parties. That's what we did when we got to the community. We were like, let's drink. So we would throw like these keggers, six, seven kegs. And like we came from that. We kind of brought that vibe. And a lot of the guys in Chicago at that time were kind of nerdy, kind of impish improvisers.

And we just brought this party element and just got everybody involved. And it was really fun. And so there was like this back hour where everybody would smoke and stuff. And we were out on the ports just in doing that freestyle thing that we had been doing since college. And it was me and my buddy Reese and Jeff and my other buddy Hobie.

And then there was this other kid who could actually rap. And usually there was not a lot of guys who could rap as good as us because we had been doing it for a couple of years. And Pete was there like in his own little thing. And I was like, let's kick it around. So that's how we met. Yeah.

And then, but you didn't immediately begin working together at that point. No. Mission Improbable started touring. We would tour colleges. And then after we toured, like I toured for about four years and then it gets really hard, but there's improv is great because you can do the same format because it's a different show every time. So we started hiring out like second crews.

And so Pete became one of the guys we hired as a second crew. So he – as one guy got married and had a kid or whatever, couldn't tour anymore. We were like we would bring other guys on. So Pete and I toured together doing the Mission Improbable show for a couple of years. And that – I learned he played guitar. We started making some music together. And then when I came out here, he came out about a year later. We just stayed in touch.

And then the rap battles started as a live show at the West Side Comedy Theater. Okay. So you came out here first. Mm-hmm. And so how did the whole Chicago thing wrap up? And then what made you come to LA? Aaron, the guy that I started with, was always very set. He's from Texas, so I guess it's closer or whatever.

He knew what it was like. But he was like, I got to go to LA. So he moved out first. And it was like this gray area because we would be touring. I'd only be home like three months out of the year. So it's like you never really had a place where you were staying anyway. But like he moved out there first. And then our other buddy Jason moved out there.

And then just one by one, we started to like matriculate. Because we knew like improv is great but it doesn't have it's you got to do something with it you know you got to write something or do a show there was no internet at that time there was no it was either get on tv or snl or you don't um so we were like all right we better go to la and you know that's where what we want to do is biggest so we never thought about doing a theater that wasn't the idea it was like write a TV show or something. Okay, right. You wanted to take the traditional path

which is like improv and then move into traditional entertainment. Yep. And then where did Josie come into this? I met Josie at a show in South Dakota.

Yeah. South Dakota? South Dakota. She's in Wyoming but she went to school in South Dakota. So yeah, she was,

I wooed her with my comedy styling. And so that was during one of the trips, one of the tours. Yeah. There's a picture of me because they're like the contacts at the schools will like hire the groups or whatever. And they'll be like student activities boards of like students who work on these crews or whatever. So Josie was like the lead on that show. So there's a picture of me meeting josie the first night me josie pete and all the guys and we're like hanging out it's like

the first night i ever met my wife that's cool yeah it's kind of nice yeah and okay so eventually and when was that when did you meet her how long has that been uh that was geez well uh That was, geez, 2003. Okay, and then you guys got married when? 2009, so we've been married just over four years. No, 2009. That's six years, Lloyd. No, yeah, I know. It keeps going, time.

We've been married for five years, so. Whenever that is. We got engaged in 2009, I think. Oh God, married for five years, so. Whenever that is. We got engaged in 2009, I think. Oh God, sorry babe. Sounds right. She's not listening. We'll edit that out, we won't. Maybe we will.

So Pete moves to LA and you guys get back together and say, let's start this. Did it start as Epic Rap Battles of History? Was that, that was the first idea? No, it was a complete accident. It was a complete accident because I never even like I didn't watch online videos before the rap battles like my second video was Vader Hitler so I wasn't like like into it you know I didn't grow anything the rap battle started inside of a live show called check one two so it was me and Zach who

I met on the road. And he was another guy that we would rap with all the time. And when he moved to LA, I was like, we should do like a comedy freestyle rap show. So we made this show called Check One Two. And it was like an hour show and have like five-minute long segments. And it was like hold up your stuff and we would rap about somebody's keys or rap about whatever. We're like, what's your name? Rap about Rhett or rap about Link. And then one of the segments was a celebrity rap battle.

Okay. And we would get two suggestions from the audience and it would be like, okay, Barbra Streisand versus Lionel Richie. And then we would go off and put these fake necklaces on and be like, everybody knows there's a long standing beef between Barbra Streisand and Lionel Richie. People are getting shot.

No one can get out their house. We're going to bring it now to the stage. We're going to squash the beef in this rap battle. So then we would freestyle rap battle. And Pete came and saw that show. And this is, I mean, completely improv. And how often does it not work? About 50% of the time.

Really? It failed about 50%. But you could come up with some cool stuff. When it fails, how would you deal with that? Well, you make, when you're watching a show, the audience understands that it's really hard. So as long as you have charisma and you can keep going, you're fine.

It's just about not being embarrassed. You can't lose confidence and just go into yourself. How important is it for it to rhyme? Which is more important than like, oh, I said something funny or that actually rhymed. It has to rhyme, right? One guy can get away with it if it's like so me versus – As a joke.

As a joke. But one guy has to be able to put it together. So you can do it without a beat. Like if you watch rap battles online, a lot of the rap battles, they don't have beats. So you can kind of like – Stretch it out. You can stretch it out. It's not – you don't have to be as articulate.

So we would do both. But I told that – I kept talking about this rap show with P because he and I used to freestyle a lot and I told him about this segment and he had just started with maker because I got an I got an email at the theater from a gentleman named Benny fine and I still have it saved and he was looking for writers or comedy people for this upstart company that they were doing where they would take YouTubers and put them and help them collaborate together. That was the station at the beginning. Eventually become Maker. Eventually became Maker.

Now it's Disney. So I sent Pete over there. And they hired him as like a little songwriter. So you got Pete. Pete owes almost his whole life to me. The Fine Brothers emailed you just blindly as a- As a theater opener, yeah. Yeah, and then you sent Pete over there.

Yeah, yeah. And then Pete started doing YouTube and getting really into that. And then when he saw the show, he was like, I love this segment, dude. I think we should do a video of it. I think we should call it Epic Rap Battles of History. And we'll ask like the audience, you know, whatever. And I was like, all love this segment. I think we should do a video of it. I think we should call it Epic Rap Battles of History. And we'll ask like the audience, you know, whatever.

And I was like, all right, whatever. Bye. I'll come over after work or whatever. Because he had made other videos. He was making his like picture songs. And he was getting going. Yeah, he was doing the musical comedy thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And at that time, if you got a thumbs up from Shea Carl or Kassem G, that could change your whole world. And they were doing that at the station in a maker. So he was like, I think we should do this rap battle thing. And then so we wrote the song. We picked a beat. We wrote the song pretty quick. And then I went in. And who was it?

Which one was it? John Lennon versus Bill O'Reilly. And then I met Dave. Dave McCary was the third and very, very most, very not most important but a very important part of this dave uh came up with because i had done videos before but i was like oh whatever usually it was like hey whatever but i walked in did the thing it was cool it was fun we did this rap thing and then i left and then like maybe a week later they sent me this cut and I was like, whoa, that is far better than I thought it was going to be. It was just.

Now, this was just the track. No, this was the video. This was like a rough cut of the video. Okay, okay. So it had all this stuff going on and it was like all this. It was just engaging. Right away, I knew it was something pretty cool. And Dave had edited it.

Dave had edited a majority of it edited it, majority of it. And he, you know, he came up with the logo even, you know, and now, and now Dave is at SNL, right?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, so that's where it started. And then, yeah, that's where I can talk to myself.

So you were like, I'm going to, I'm back in, I'm going to come back in for another one of these. Let's keep doing this. Yeah. I mean, that was the,

it was the, cause it was, how, how big was that one? It was, I mean, Vader was, it was the... Because it was, how big was that one? I mean, Vader-Hitler was two, number two? Two, yeah. Right, so that's the one that really took off. Yeah, yeah, that's the one that did it.

But it didn't take, I mean... The first one, I remember looking on Pete's channel and being like, whoa, the video I'm in is like the second most viewed channel on Pete's channel. It was pretty cool. It was like four or 500,000 views, which was good. But then Vader-Hit Hitler went really, really big. And then we kind of followed it up with Norris and Abe Lincoln.

And that, I think the fact that we did three of them in a row that were pretty good, they were all good, but they were, you know, it never got really corny. It never got really cheesy. The concept held. And also Maker was like on this trajectory and youtube itself was like it was like all at the crust of this wave right there and it was like 2008 or 9 or whatever we were all kind of you guys too like it was all growing really quickly so it just got happened and then so by episode 8 i quit the theater or i left i didn't you know i was like hey i gotta go

do this thing and then i started working on Battles full time. What's your favorite personal performance? Like. Ah, that's a good one. I really, I'm Italian and I really enjoyed playing Al Capone. I feel like it was like, I felt like I owed it to my people. So I enjoyed that.

And I think that people enjoyed me as that character, which really felt, it felt good to do that. Cause it was nerve wracking. I really enjoyed that. Did he email you afterward? Oh yeah, the Capone family emailed me. I think that I have to say Hitler to some extent because that character has been so good to us.

Did he email you? I got an email from Hitler. I feel like I don't know if, I mean, I feel like I can play that version of Hitler in places that you shouldn't be able to play Hitler, just because of whatever that is, the sort of like Germany thing. Right.

I really loved Walter White. I really loved Hannibal Lecter this last time that we did. I'm really loving some of the battles that we have coming in the new six. I saw some pictures that excited me. Yeah. I like the tough guy guy. I like the tough guy character. Right.

I guess that's always been my thing. Maybe it's the athlete in me, but I like those guys. And one of the things that you've done is you've developed your own online presence apart from ERB with the Epic Lloyd channel. And I don't know how many you're doing anymore, but one of the, I really enjoyed all the ones that you have done are the DisRaps for Hire. Tell us about how that idea came about. First of all, I apologize to everybody out there for not doing more of these. I really wish I could. And it's not that I don't want to do them. I just, I don't know. And maybe you, I don't know how you guys do all the videos that you do. I, I just haven't had time to sit down and like punch one out or like write one out. So I came, DisRaps for Hire came from me as a kid when there used to be like your front page of youtube or whatever it

was like that front page and a kid just wrote me i started putting up little raps and stuff like that but a kid wrote me and was like um hey my older brother has been picking on me his name is charles uh he he's he's got a a weird Guido mustache and he never likes any of the food on his plate to touch but he picks on me all the time you won't leave me alone please write a rap destroying him so I was like yes sir I'm all over this yeah so I came up with this idea like I was like that sounds fun you know it was like and it felt like the type of thing and then it felt like the type of thing that if if you'd like to rap battle you might like this you know it felt like the type of thing that if you like to rap battle, you might like this.

It was like a good example of a successful sort of spinoff. I was able to drop little hints about the battle in the DisRaps videos. So people would be like, oh, he wrote on the chalkboard. What's that thing? So you ripped Charles a new one. I did rip Charles a new bass. Yes, I did. I lyrically did.

So you still want to get back to doing those more often. I mean, what's the main thing? I mean, there's the Epic Studios web series? Yeah, I'm doing a web series called Epic Studios that's hopefully going to get produced in early 2016 in Toronto. And that's like a workplace comedy that is about a guy who inherits a studio

from his dad who gets killed by a lion. Don't say y'all. So hard. So hard to cope when it happens so much. So yeah, Epic Studios. Did you write this?

I wrote it with Aaron, the guy I went to college with, and his wife, Jill. And what's the outlet for this? That's TBD still. It's like, it's hopefully, I think it's going to be online. I think it's going to be online,

but it's still in like the process of maybe getting picked up or not, but hopefully the chances are good. Is it like you shot a pilot or? We shot a sizzle reel. It's called like a sizzle reel. So we shot a sizzle reel for that up in Toronto. And it's through the, in Canada,

you get like federal grant money to make art and stuff. So it's like this application process for that. So we're in like the second or third round of that. So hopefully we'll get picked up, which would be really cool. Yeah. Oh. So Epic Studios and then diss raps for hire on

the epic lloyd channel and try to do that and just original music and then the big news is the rap battles tour which is in august we start we start touring um in the middle of august right after this season gets over and then we go on tour in the united states for a month and then we go and we're going over to europe so the uk and france and France and Spain and a bunch of dates over there. So I'm really, really excited for that. Can we come? Yes, you absolutely can come. Actually, if we do a show here in LA,

we're gonna ask you guys to come and perform. Did you just ask? Because we just said yes. Yeah, right leg, right leg. I mean, I'm talking Spain too. I mean, I can swing by Spain. Swing by. Swing on ole

yeah I love that we gotta practice a little bit more than we did before we got up there for VidCon and like started our like Mario Brothers thing like that's hard though it's hard the crowd was very loud we gotta start we had to start the song yeah I'm like

looking at I'm like looking at you and Pete like come on wink or something. We were so mad at ourselves after that. Nobody noticed except us and Pete and you. I was mad, we were going back home, we were driving back up to LA from Anaheim and I was just mad and I texted Pete and was just like, man, I feel so bad

for not coming in at the right time. We're the right brothers and we started at the wrong time. And he was like, man, I feel so bad for not coming in at the right time. We're the right brothers and we started at the wrong time. And he was like, man, don't worry about it. I totally screwed up Vader Hitler at Playlist. Vader Hitler starts with a – And there's like no – There's no like what are you supposed to do? It's just like you got to be like two.

Click track. Yeah. And we put that in. But the click track or the beat is like the hardest thing to hear when there's like a big audience or whatever. So it's like, I missed it. So it's like the biggest nightmare ever, aside from forgetting, literally forgetting the words, which I didn't do, thank God.

But like, it was just me being like, I made off Hitler. It's so bad. It was bad. Okay, I feel a little bit better now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, dude, this was fun. You gotta sign the table. You earned it.

All right, thank you. And there you have it, our Ear Biscuit with Epic Lloyd. Let him know what you think. Tweet at him, TheEpicLloyd. Use hashtag Ear Biscuits. Always appreciate you guys tweeting at our guest and letting them know that what you think and what you appreciate about their conversation.

As always, a privilege to talk to a guy that is doing something that is of such a high quality. And you know, I gotta say- It's a privilege, it's a privilege. I've been looking at the comments on the recent Rap Battle featuring us, Link, we were in that, I remember that. And lots of people were saying,

I have no idea who these people are. I don't know who Lewis and Clark are, and I don't know who Bill and Ted are. And I gotta say, what that means, first of all, is that A, people don't watch great movies from the 80s. B, people don't know history. The second point, I think we have influenced because- Well, you know, I don't have to tell you

that I haven't seen Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Of course, of course. And what was the second one? You're not supposed to mention that. You're supposed to just let that, you don't need to acknowledge that. You don't need to be part of the problem because you're part of the solution,

which is the second point. People don't know history. Oh, I do know who Lewis and Clark are. Until now, think about it. Millions of people out there, Link, the only thing they know about Lewis and Clark is what we have taught them as Lewis and Clark. When they think Lewis and Clark, they see me in you.

How does that make you feel? That is the responsibility. We represent American heroes to kids everywhere. Maybe this, well, if I would've known that, I'd probably been even more nervous. Oh really? In the recording booth. Oh, I gotta get this right. But it turned out really great, I think.

Also for the Wright brothers. I mean, more people know who the Wright brothers are. Yeah, first in flight, more people do know. They invented the airplane in North Carolina. The Renaissance. They didn't invent it in North Carolina. I know they invented it in Ohio and then they flew it in North Carolina, but we don't care.

We're gonna take credit for it because they flew it at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Yeah, so it's nice to be a part of it, of the educational thrust of hip-hop music on the internet. Oh, really? That's one way to think about it. All right, guys, you know what we're gonna do. We're gonna give you another one of these next week,

so open your hearts, open your minds, open your ears for the biscuit. All you have to do is receive it. Just lay down right here and just put these headphones on and don't think about anything. This is getting a little weird. Don't think about anything. Just listen.

This is like the way you talk to somebody before you kill them. Or just before you put them under for like dental work. Okay. Count backwards from 10. 9, 8. You started at 9. 7, 6, 5, four, three.