The best comedy is inherently nerdy, and the best music is (usually) pretty cool. So part of me wants to apologize for racking up more plays from the Lonely Island's Incredibad than any other album this year. I feel like a nerd. But I think the Lonely Island have found a populist way to elicit the same nerd thrills one would get from the best sketches from "The State" or "Upright Citizens Brigade".
Comedy fans first noticed the Lonely Island's Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer when their series, "The 'Bu" debuted on Channel101.com, a site that pushes or pulls comedy shorts based on viewer votes. Because they came from the web, Lonely Island's "Saturday Night Live" work understands viral video, so much so that the bulk of their audience may come days or weeks after the original air date. That contributes to the stickiness of their videos. Lonely Island's digital shorts don't care about the instant gratification of "SNL"'s premise-based sketches (a gratification so instant it usually ends minutes before the sketch does). They're more interested in sustained laughs, clinging tenaciously to tangents, or using repetition to unfold a new layer of weirdness in each iteration. All of those traits apply to their musical shorts, and thus to their first major release, Incredibad. (The album also comes with a DVD of shorts, everything you've seen on "SNL" except "Iran So Far" and "I'm on a Boat", plus two older Lonely Island videos, "Just 2 Guyz" and "Bing Bong Brothers". "Just 2 Guyz" gets remade as "We Love Sportz" on Incredibad, but the amazingly awkward original remains the better track.)
Incredibad seems unique among musical comedy projects. Production and delivery-wise, "Lazy Sunday" and "On a Boat" are honest-to-goodness hip-hop tracks. But if you think the target of the satire is hip-hop itself, you're missing the point. Lonely Island don't sell genre parody or irony. These dudes, particularly beatmaker Jorma Taccone (who often writes with his brother Asa Taccone), are obviously hip-hop fans, as Incredibad is appreciative homage, more Beastie Boys than (simply) white and nerdy.
That's not always true. Sometimes part of the joke is the contrast between the singer's subject matter and their delivery, ("Lazy Sunday", "Natalie's Rap") though the latter is really all about character destruction, not parody. Most of their jokes come inside the lyrics. Even "Ras Trent", their riff on trustafarians, is more about lines like "Me toil part-time at ja Cold Stone Creamery" than Rastafarianism itself.
Although "Dick in a Box" and others are available online, the album-only tracks make it worth getting Incredibad, instead of firing up Hulu.com. "Like a Boss" and "Dreamgirl" [ft. Norah Jones] deserve video treatment on "SNL", but both are hilarious on their own. Like their best, "SNL"-aired material, these songs get better as they go on, mostly because of the way the lyrics carry the joke to its logical and grotesque endpoint. "Like a Boss" begins making fun of Rick Ross and Slim Thug ("Talk to corporate (like a boss)/ Approve memos (like a boss)," but ends with the singer fucking a giant fish, turning into a jet, and crashing into the sun.
Absurdity is the Lonely Island's strongest suit, and thus, the premise-based songs sometimes fall flat. E-40, playing Carlos Santana on "Santana DVX", puts in the funniest verse on this premisey song, but Jack Black can't save the guys' one joke on "Sax Man". Also, the dudes found another way to respect their favorite genre: Their between-song skits aren't very funny.
The Lonely Island understand repetition and exaggeration. On SNL, that was most apparent in their "Dear Sister" sketch, its melodramatic, "O.C."-savaging death scene iterations getting funnier and funnier. On Incredibad it's the "boiled goose" line on "Boombox", the endlessly repeated chorus of "I'm on a boat!" from "I'm on a Boat". Basic comedy stuff, sure, but the guys also have a good sense of when to quit (see also the "cool beans" segment in "Hot Rod"). Maybe it's that same sense of rhythm that guides their songwriting. Maybe that makes this comedy music, instead of musical comedy, because it's hard to tell which one's modifying the other. Still, good timing's good timing.
