Epic Rap Battles of History "King Henry VIII vs Hillary Clinton" (found unreleased episode of YouTube series; 2012)
Epic Rap Battles of History is a YouTube video series created by Peter Shukoff and Lloyd Ahlquist. The series pits famous historical and pop culture figures, real and fictional, against one another in a rap battle format. The series has 6 seasons and 73 episodes.
The planned Season 2 rap battle "King Henry VIII vs Hillary Clinton" was supposed to be uploaded early into the season, but it was never released due to it not meeting the standards the creators had. The battle was replaced with "Freddy Mercury vs Frank Sinatra". The battle was lost for nine years, with only fifteen seconds of Hillary's verse and the audio being found until the complete battle was released on February 15th, 2020.
The Search
On November 18th 2011, the Season 1 finale, titled "The Final Battle: Nice Peter vs EpicLLOYD" was released on Youtube, and with it were included several character teasers for the upcoming Season 2. One of the characters teased was King Henry VIII of England, played by youtuber Shay Carl.[1] However the episode supposedly featuring him went by unreleased for the entire season, leading to speculation among fans as to the status of the battle in question. Prior to the upload of the video, series co-creator Nice Peter showed a clip of Shay Carl rapping in the sound booth in a Monday Show episode, released October 17th of the same year.[2]
In 2014, the actress behind Hillary Clinton, Susan Deming uploaded footage of the battle to her youtube channel. The video consisted of snippets of her first verse from the lost episode, only amounting to 15 seconds in total.[3] This served as the only confirmation that the battle was indeed planned and in production up to some point. Series co-creator Nice Peter confirmed that editing did not go beyond these two clips as production was halted and the battle was ultimately cancelled due to it being considered below standard.
In December of 2018, the ERB2 youtube channel released a Christmas compilation video. In said video a URL was featured for a split second towards the end. The URL would redirect to a page containing the MP3 to the complete audio for Hillary Clinton vs Henry VIII.[4] In February 16th of 2020, the Patreon page for ERB uploaded a patron-exclusive video of the battle complete with accompanying visuals, effectively making the video found, although only to patrons of ERB at the time. Though the video in question was made years after the battle gained notoriety for being unfinished, effectively making it a recreation of what it would've been like if it were finalized.
Release
On February 15th of 2020, ERB2 uploaded "UNRELEASED: Henry VIII vs Hillary Clinton Battle & 2020 Update." In the video is the originally Patreon-exclusive video for the battle, finally giving anyone access to viewing the full battle over 8 years since the initial tease.[5]
Gallery
External Links
- Epic Rap Battle of History Wiki article on the unreleased episode. Retrieved 12 Mar '16
- ↑ Original preview for Henry VIII. Retrieved 24 Jul '21
- ↑ Shay Carl in a sound booth Retrieved 24 Jun '21
- ↑ Deming's upload of herself as Hillary Clinton Retrieved 24 Jul '21
- ↑ URL to the audio. Retrieved 24 Jun '21
- ↑ The full battle Retrieved 24 Jul '21