Sir Isaac Newton Faces Bill Nye In Another Epic Rap Battle Of History
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Epic Rap Battles of History has been pitting famous opponents against each other in lyrical sparring matches since 2010. Over that time, they’ve had such unlikely matches as John Lennon vs. Bill O’Reilly, Genghis Khan vs. the Easter Bunny, and Back to the Future’s Doc Brown vs. the Doctor from Doctor Who. Oh, and Darth Vader has challenged Hitler three times, because goodness knows the internet loves a good Hitler joke. Now ERB is back with their latest challenge, and it pits Sir Isaac Newton against Bill “The Science Guy” Nye…with a surprise third challenger, but we won’t spoil the surprise. Well, at least not until after this…
SPOILER WARNING!
I know it seems a little silly to include a spoiler warning for a goofy internet video, but Neil deGrasse Tyson’s cosmic appearance (played by Chali 2na) is my favorite part of the whole video. And that’s saying something given that Sir Isaac Newton is being played by Weird Al Yankovic (who apparently has a picture of himself growing older in his attic, because he stopped aging like a decade ago). It seems like an unfair fight across the board, on both the Isaac Newton and Weird Al. We loves us some Bill Nye, and he’s an awesome defender of science in our often anti-science age, but come on: it’s SIR ISAAC NEWTON. Weird Al was spitting out lyrics a mile a minute long before we even had an Internet. There’s no shame to losing to one of the giants (I’ll let you decide for yourself whether I’m talking about Newton or Weird Al).
One little tidbit that I’d love to know whether it was intentional is having Tyson reference the “We got a badass over here meme.” It pairs that phrase with a drawing of Tyson, hands up, mocking being impressed or intimidated. But the fun thing I discovered while writing this is that that original image was based on a screenshot from a video where Tyson is talking about…Sir Isaac Newton. If that’s just an accidental bit of synchronicity, that’s awesome. If it was intentional, then well done, Epic Rap Battles.
Weird Al’s appearance — aside from the fact that he’s just really good at this sort of thing — is likely tied to the just-announced upcoming release of his new album, Mandatory Fun, which drops on July 15. We’re more than a little excited about it.
You can check out a few more of our favorite Epic Rap Battles below.
