After Two-Year Hiatus, YouTube Staple ‘Epic Rap Battles Of History’ Plots Return

Epic Rap Battles Of History, the Emmy-nommed digital series that pits figures from pop culture and history against one another in highly-produced hip hop duals, is readying its comeback after an expansive two-year hiatus.

Season six of the series, which is created by Peter Shukoff and Lloyd Ahlquist — better known to the channel’s 14 million subscribers as Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd — is set to bow next spring. The guys teased the return of the series in a video on their channel today (below), which also revealed that fans won’t have to wait until next year for a taste of new content: a bonus episode — in which Shukoff and Ahlquist will battle against one another — is set to drop next Friday.

Epic Rap Battles went on hiatus after its last episode in Jan. 2017 — in which Shukoff and Ahlquist also faced off against one another. Shukoff told Inverse

that the duo was burned out after relentelessly creating content for six years — or “feeding the machine,” as he describes it — though they did team up for a tour this year in which they performed some of their biggest hits.

Past episodes — which have garnered a collective 3 billion lifetime views — have featured battles between Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, James Bond and Austin Powers, and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

In April 2017, Ahlquist launched a web series on his personal channel called Epic Studios, about a man who inherits a dilapidated studio from his deceased rock star father — with each episode accompanied by its own musical number care of ERB collaborator Zach Sherwin.