The Lonely Island Is Wacker Than Ever

As rap has come up from the underground over the past few decades to become a ubiquitously accessible musical genre, people who once wouldn't have been allowed to pick up a mic have whole-heartedly embraced the genre and have even gone on to make rap more than just a hobby.

Count among them The Lonely Island—a Bay Area-based comedy trio made up of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone—who have parlayed their stint as writers and stars of Saturday Night Live to a now three-albums-deep music career. The guys, who built a fan foundation while at SNL by producing viral Digital Shorts, have gone on to work with heavyweight artists like Kendrick Lamar, T-Pain and Snoop Dogg, and producers like T-Minus, No I.D. and Needlz.

In light of the release of the trio's third LP The Wack Album, which drops next Tuesday, The Lonely Island sat down with a roundtable of press outlets including XXL to talk about Bay Area rap, writing a song with Kendrick Lamar and respecting hip-hop.

On collaborating with rappers: 

Andy Samberg: When we work with a rapper, we give them talking points of what we think would be funny, then let them write it. It's so much more specific to do a verse of rapping than it is to sing a hook. But generally when we have a singing part, there's a version of me doing a temp singing part.

Jorma Taccone: Any time there's a singer, there's a version of Andy doing temp singing.

Samberg: Yeah, it's humiliating. [Laughs] But like, on the song we did with Pharrell, we wrote all of the choruses and then there was like a bridge, rap section, and we gave him talking points. But he wrote it all himself. Or for Kendrick Lamar, who's on "YOLO," he came into the studio and we were just like, "Something like this." Then he sat there and wrote a verse really quick on his iPhone and then went and dropped it. We didn't know what he was going to do until he was recording, so there's always this moment of, "I hope it's funny!" But we've been really lucky that the people who have wanted to work with us have a good sense of humor.

On their writing process: 

Samberg: We have two main ways that we'll make a song. The first is: we have an idea, then we sift through a bunch of beats until we find one that we think matches. The other one is: we get in the studio and just listen to beats until the sound of one inspires an idea, then start writing it.

Taccone: We have a library of beats that've been given to us by real, professional producers.

Samberg: Once we have an idea, we just sit in a room with yellow notepads and listen to the beat over and over and over and write things that we try to make each other laugh with and compile them all, then start recording and sort of build it as we go.

On promoting The Wack Album by releasing new music via their Wack Wednesdays series:

Taccone: We're just taking a page out of Kanye West's old notebook. The notebook that he doesn't even use anymore.

Samberg: Yeah, we wanted to record a video of ourselves watching the projection of his ["New Slaves"] video on a wall, and then project the video of us watching it on a wall. He's so good at marketing. For us, it was just like, "We're not on SNL anymore, and we want to make sure people know we have a new record." So we figured if we had a time and a place where people could know they could check in for new stuff, it would be helpful. It's been fun to be in our own mini-SNL cycle, where we're posting things and feel like we're connecting with an audience.

On respecting hip-hop:

Samberg: The very notion of rapping for comedy is a really fine line, and we try to be very careful with how we walk it, because when it's not done right it's the thing we hate the most in the world.

Akiva Schaffer: By definition, [comedy rap] is a very lame thing.

Taccone: And it can be very insulting to the genre that we actually love so much.

Samberg: It's a little weird, because I'm sure there are people who see what we do and lump it in with a bunch of other stuff that we would be like, insulted to be compared to. But at the same time, we always try to be careful about not doing ideas where the joke is just, "We're white nerds rapping!" There's got to be a joke, and then rap or r&b or pop is the vessel with which we deliver the joke.

On Bay Area rap: 

Schaffer: We were growing up right around the time of the Hieroglyphics.

Taccone: Yeah, we grew up with Too $hort, and we listened to E-40 a lot in high school.

Schaffer: But then there was Del [the Funky Homosapien] and Souls of Mischief. And Digital Underground.

Taccone: We have B-Legit on a b-side track of a song we did for this movie Hot Rod. It's this "Cool Beans" remix that we got B-Legit on.

Schaffer: Then we have E-40 on our first record, and Too $hort on this one. We're very excited to be able to work with those guys.

On performing as a comedy troupe versus performing as a rap trio: 

Taccone: It would be comedy first, for sure. It feels inappropriate for us to be billed with a real hip-hop act.

Schaffer: It'd also be like, "Wow, these guys aren't good at hip-hop!" if you put us right next to a real hip-hop artist.

Taccone: KRS would be disappointed.

Samberg: Of course, if we did some stand-up comedy first, then we could come out and do a show and people would be like, "Whoa, this is undeniably more energy!"