Usually, I stay away from novelty albums, but being an Andy Samberg fan I decided to give this one a try. The Lonely Island is Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. The latter two are writers on Saturday Night Life, and Samberg is a featured player on the program. The trio is responsible for the internet friendly SNL Digital Shorts, which rose to fame with the short ‘Lazy Sunday’ and achieved complete internet takeover with the immensely popular ‘Dick in a Box’ featuring Justin Timberlake.
One of the things that stood out about the Digital Short series, is the music production was pretty good considering it was for a sketch comedy show. So it was a natural progression to take it to the next level and release a full album. This is a full album, and more.
The production quality is top notch, with the exception of the pre-SNL material that is thankfully not plentiful. Naturally, comedy albums focus on the jokes, but if you didn’t know they were spouting jokes, you might mistake this for the hottest rap record in 2009. Many artists contribute to the tracks, including T-Pain, E-40, Julian Casablances (from the Stokes), Norah Jones, and actors Jack Black, Chris Parnell and Natalie Portman. All of the popular SNL shorts are remixed, and sound better minus the laughter that littered the Internet videos, such as the aforementioned ‘Dick in a Box’ and ‘Lazy Sunday’. All of the performers do their part with a straight and honest approach, with Schaffer and Samberg delivering verses with the proficiency of today’s better rappers. Thankfully, Samberg focues on rapping more than singing. His singing is probably the biggest drawback of the album, but they did re-track the vocals for ‘Dick in a Box’.
Standout tracks include the ode to Carlos Santana’s Champagne, ‘Santana DVX’, ‘On a Boat’ featuring T-Pain, and ‘Jizz in My Pants’.
If you expect this album to be a straight comedy cd, you may want to rethink your approach. This is a musical album, that happens to be hilarious at the same time.
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