Review: The Lonely Island's Turtleneck and Chain

[Flack]

Some albums have a "magical moment", often times a riff or a chorus, that can sum up the entire listening experience. On The Lonely Island's sophomore album ("Turtleneck and Chain", released this week), that moment comes near the "Throw it on the Ground." After running through a laundry list of things Andy Samberg (one third of the Lonely Island crew) has been gifted and subsequently thrown on the ground, two offended "Hollywood Phonies" toss Samberg face down and repeatedly "taser him in the butthole". This act isn't simply alluded to; an entire verse is spent, in detail, describing the tasering of Samberg's butthole. As those four or five lines played through my headphones, I thought to myself that, given that particular moment, most listeners should be able to easily determine whether or not Turtleneck and Chain is for them.

(That's not entirely true; listeners will have decided long before they get to that point in the album.)

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(The first single: "We're Back")

The Lonely Island is a (self-described) "fake rap group"/comedy troupe consisting of three SNL alum: Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone. The group can trace its roots back to 2005 with the airing of the Saturday Night Live Digital Short "Lazy Sunday". Some of the trio's most famous works, including "Like a Boss", "Natalie Rap", and the Grammy-nominated (seriously) "I'm on a Boat", were combined with with new material for the group's debut release, "Incredibad", released in 2009.

"Turtleneck and Chain", the band's second collection of comedic hip-hop stylings, could just as easily have been called "Incredibad Part II". Like "Incredibad", several of the tracks on "Turtleneck and Chain" previously aired on Saturday Night Live (some as long as two years ago). "Motherlover", a song in which two b-boys declare the best possible Mother's Day gifts they could give would be to have sex with each other's mothers ("it would be an honor / to be your new stepfather"), originally aired on SNL back on Mother's Day weekend of 2009. Additionally, "On the Ground", "Two Worlds Collide", "Shy Ronnie 2", "I Just Had Sex", "The Creep", and "Jack Sparrow" have all already aired on SNL.

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Musically, The Lonely Island's tracks are on par (or perhaps even surpass) the genre in which they're poking fun at. The real difference is in the lyrics. Track 10, a classic "bank robbery" tale, starts out as hard as any classic NWA track. It's not until the dookie begins to hit the fan (literally) that the track's title ("Trouble on Dookie Island") makes sense.

Fans of 80s hip-hop will appreciate this album on another level. "My Mic" is a quick riffing of Salt-N-Pepa's classic "My Mic Sounds Nice". "Rocky", in which one of the guys challenges the fictitious boxer to a fight in the ring, is reminiscent of Will Smith's "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson". A knowledge of hop-hop isn't required to enjoy the jokes, but it does add a second layer of appreciation.

What is required is a sense of humor and an absolute inability to be offended. In "No Homo", the guys decree it's okay to compliment your friend's smile or physique as long as it's followed by the phrase "no homo" (the list quickly degenerates into things like wishing they lived in ancient Greece, and wanting to play Human Centipede together). "We're Back" is a two-minute ode to the members' dysfunctional "members". In "I Just Had Sex" ... well, yeah.

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