Lloyd Ahlquist

Comedy and theater

Ahlquist was formerly the general manager and artistic director of M.I.'s Westside Comedy Theater. Ahlquist also studied at UMass Amherst and later trained in Chicago (where he met his frequent collaborator Peter Shukoff) at The Second City, Improv Olympic and Annoyance Theatre. Ahlquist was one of the founding members of Mission IMPROVable, and continues to perform with the group weekly in their show "The Grind" while serving on the Board of Directors of M.i. Productions. He founded the comedy troupe after dropping out of the University of Massachusetts with five classmates.

In August 2014, Ahqluist hosted YouTube's first live-streamed improv comedy event, "Off the Top." A trailer for "Epic Studios", a show starring Ahlquist, was released in 2015 and the first episodes were posted to his personal YouTube channel in April 2017.

YouTube

Solo channel

Ahlquist launched his YouTube channel on April 20, 2011. He has a staple series on his own channel, titled "Dis Raps for Hire", which features Ahlquist taking a user-submitted comment asking Ahlquist to lyrically "destroy" or insult another person that is bullying or harassing the user. To date, 20 "Dis Raps for Hire" have been produced. Season 2 of "Dis Raps for Hire" started on March 11, 2013.

On July 17, 2012, Lloyd's channel hit 200,000 subscribers. As a "thank you" gesture, he produced a parody of the Cinnamon challenge. In 2016, Lloyd hit 400,000 subscribers. By 2021, he had 479,000 subscribers.

Starting in 2017, Ahlquist has also run the series Epic Studios, where he portrays a fictional version of himself as he struggles to keep the Canadian music studio he inherited from his father from being turned into condos.

Epic Rap Battles of History

In 2010, Ahlquist partnered with singer and rapper Peter Shukoff to create Epic Rap Battles of History under Maker Studios sometime after Ahlquist, Shukoff and Zach Sherwin (a guest in the rap battles), were playing Check OneTwo, a freestyle rap improv game where they took suggestions from the audience of famous people to battle rap off the top of their heads. Ahlquist has played several characters in the successful rap battles, and has specialized in playing villains such as Bill O'Reilly and Adolf Hitler. Epic Rap Battles of History received four wins at the 3rd Streamy Awards, with Ahlquist receiving one of the four awards. By October 2014, the rap battles accumulated a total view count of over 1 billion, excluding the hundreds of millions of views earned by the season 1 episodes. As of early 2020, the Epic Rap Battle channel had over 3.4 billion views.

Personal life

Ahlquist grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire, and graduated from Exeter High School. He married Josie Hutchinson, a student affairs educator, on 18 October 2009 in Malibu. They live in Los Angeles.

Discography

Albums

Dis Raps for Hire – Season 1 (2013)

Here EP (2016)

Dis Raps for Hire – Season 2 (2018)

A Bad Name for Rappers (2019)

Songs

Dis Raps For Hire – Charles

Dis Raps For Hire – Southwest High School

Dis Raps For Hire – Christian

Dis Raps For Hire – Jennifer

Dis Raps For Hire – Justin

Dis Raps For Hire – James

Dis Raps For Hire – William, Reshad, and Tyrance

Dis Raps For Hire – Daniel

Dis Raps For Hire – Joan

Gift Raps For Hire – Momma Metcalf

Dis Raps For Hire – Glasscock

Dis Raps For Hire – Jason and Ramone

Dis Raps For Hire – Steven, Lucas, Mark, and Nelson

Dis Raps For Hire – EthanAlways

Dis Raps For Hire – Diamond

Dis Raps For Hire – Jerome

Dis Raps For Hire – Katrina & Cheyenne

Dis Raps For Hire – This Guy

Dis Raps for Hire – Cory

Gift Raps for Hire – Brandon

The L-Verse

Coming Up Short

Pawn

Ninja