Brent Black (born April 12, 1984), also known as brentalfloss, is a musician who adds lyrics to classic video game titles, such as ''

Punch-Out!! is a video game series of boxing created by Nintendo's general manager Genyo Takeda, and his partner Makoto Wada. The first game was '' Punch-Out!!'' made in 1984 as an arcade unit, which was followed by a sequel '' Super Punch-Out!!'' (1984) ...

'', ''

Mega Man 2 ''Mega Man 2'' is an action game developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in Japan in 1988 and in North America and PAL regions the following years. ''Mega Man 2'' continues Mega Man (character), ...

'', ''

Super Mario 3D World is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Wii U in 2013. It is the sixth original 3D platform game in the ''Super Mario'' series and the sequel to ''Super Mario 3D Land'' (2011) for the Nintendo 3DS. Players control Mar ...

'', and ''

Donkey Kong Country ''Donkey Kong Country'' is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is a reboot of Nintendo's ''Donkey Kong'' franchise and follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and h ...

''. He also has original songs for his albums and some on YouTube, such as "This is the Album You've Been Waiting For", "The BrentalFloss Comic Song", and his first song, "The Dreamer". He wrote this song when he was 12, and his sister named it. Black was born in

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. He received his undergraduate degree at the

University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...

and went on to earn his

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in musical theatre writing at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

. In his time at NYU, he co-wrote a musical with composer Rob Broadhurst called "I’ll Be Damned", which had a limited Off-Broadway run at the

Vineyard Theatre The Vineyard Theatre is an Off-Broadway non-profit theatre company, located at 108 East 15th Street in Manhattan, New York City, near Union Square. Its first production was in 1981. It is best known for its productions of the Tony award-winning ...

in New York City in 2010.

Career

YouTube career

Black is best known for adding lyrics to video game music. His first "with lyrics" video he made was based on the title theme of

Mega Man 3 ''Mega Man 3'' (stylized as ''Mega Man III'') is an action- platform video game developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the third game of the original ''Mega Man'' series and was originally released in ...

for the

NES The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...

. Black's website indicates that his

stage name A stage name is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers—such as actors, comedians, singers, and musicians. Such professional aliases are adopted for a wide variety of reasons and they may be similar, or nearly identical, to an individu ...

"brentalfloss" is always intentionally spelled with lower-case letters.(July 26, 2011.
"YouTube phenom credits ‘personal ramblings' for success."
Fro
''Burlington Times News''
Accessed September 2011. Black also appears as one of the principal actors in the

web series A web series (also known as a web show) is a series of scripted or non-scripted online videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet, which first emerged in the late 1990s and became more prominent in the early 2000s. A single i ...

My Life as a Video Game ''My Life as a Video Game'' is a British/American action-comedy web series created and written by Petros L. Ioannou, who also stars as the protagonist Don DeWitt. It is premiered on the LeonUnity channel on YouTube on November 12, 2013, with its ...

'' in the role of ''Menu'', a

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

A.I. Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech rec ...

Beyond YouTube

Black has also released studio albums. His first CD, ''What If This CD... Had Lyrics?'' was released in the Spring of 2010. It contains re-recorded and re-mastered versions of every song of his "With Lyrics" series that was released at that time, plus additional CD-exclusive songs. It features fellow video game bands

The Megas ''The Megas'' is a five-issue mini-series from Virgin Comics and film director Jonathan Mostow. Credits ''The Megas'' was created by Jonathan Mostow, and is written by John Harrison, with art by Peter Rubin and color by S. Periaswamy. The ...

and The Konami Kode, with tracks peaking in the top 100 on

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...

comedy charts worldwide. He has also released a G-Rated and instrumental version of the album. In early 2011, he released ''The Super-Secret EP'' under the pseudonym "DJ Super Secret", which was revealed to members of his mailing list first, and was released to public afterwards. Black later set up a fundraising page on his site to try to garner funds for a second CD, which reached its goal of $4000. The CD was completed in March 2012, but was unable to be released until June 2012 due to printing errors. He released digital downloads for ''Bits of Me'' on June 8, 2012. In February 2014, Black released his third studio album, ''Flossophy''. Black also appeared in three ''

Nostalgia Critic ''Nostalgia Critic'' is an American review comedy web series created, directed by and starring web comedian Douglas "Doug" Walker. The series initially launched on YouTube on July 3, 2007, before moving to Walker's own site, That Guy with the G ...

'' reviews of '' Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2'', ''

Moulin Rouge! ''Moulin Rouge!'' (, ) is a 2001 jukebox musical romantic drama film directed, co-produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann. It follows a young English poet, Christian, who falls in love with the star of the Moulin Rouge, cabaret actress and cour ...

'' and ''

Les Misérables ''Les Misérables'' ( , ) is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its original ...

'', as well as Paw Dugan's review of ''

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog ''Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog'' is a 2008 musical comedy-drama miniseries in three acts, produced exclusively for Internet distribution. Filmed and set in Los Angeles, the show tells the story of Dr. Horrible (played by Neil Patrick Harris) ...

''. The official soundtrack is available. Black formerly produced a brentalfloss webcomic series as well, running from 2012 to 2013 and concluding after its 200th entry. From 2015 to 2020, Black co-hosted a podcast on

Maximum Fun Maximum Fun is an independent podcast and radio show production organization founded and run by Jesse Thorn. The organization originated with Thorn's college radio show ''The Sound of Young America'' which continued in an adapted format and with ...

, titled "Trends Like These", in which he, his former college roommate

Travis McElroy Travis Patrick McElroy ( , born November 8, 1983) is an American podcaster, writer, and comedian. He is known for his work on podcasts such as ''My Brother, My Brother and Me'', '' Shmanners'', '' The Adventure Zone'', and '' Can I Pet Your Dog? ...

, and journalist

Courtney Enlow Courtney is a name of Old French origin, introduced into England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It has two quite distinct interpretations: firstly, the surname may be locational, from places called Courtenay in the regions of Loiret and Gâ ...

discussed topics and issues trending on social media websites. In July 2019, he began a podcast with

Kate Sloan Kate name may refer to: People and fictional characters * Kate (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or nickname * Gyula Káté (born 1982), Hungarian amateur boxer * Lauren Kate (born 1981), American autho ...

called Question Box. From 2015 to release in 2017, he designed, produced and launched a video game titled '' Use Your Words'' alongside veteran game developer Julian Spillane, who pitched the game as "a party game for funny people and their unfunny friends.". In 2019 announced he is producing the soundtrack for a multi-platform cat-themed adventure platform game titled '' A Purrtato Tail'', set to release in 2023.

Discography

Albums

* ''What If This CD... Had Lyrics?'' (2010) * ''What If This CD... Had G-Rated Lyrics?'' (2011) * ''Bits of Me'' (2012) * ''The Youtube Collection 2008-2012'' (2013) * ''Flossophy'' (2014)

EPs

* ''The Super-Secret EP'' (as DJ Super-Secret) (2011)

References

External links

* * * {{Authority control 1984 births Living people Video game music cover bands Musicians from Dallas University of Oklahoma alumni Tisch School of the Arts alumni Songwriters from Texas American Internet celebrities YouTubers from Texas