The Lonely Island – Turtleneck & Chain

The Lonely Island is a group made up of Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and Andy Samberg. Samberg is a cast member of Saturday Night Live and the group does digital shorts for the show. I’m sure everyone has seen “Lazy Sunday”, “Dick In A Box”, “Jizz In My Pants” and “I’m On A Boat”. They took a bunch of songs that they have made videos for and put them on Incredibad in 2009. The songs are comedic but have some decent beats and rap verses.

Now they are back with Turtleneck & Chain, a new batch of raps and laughs. A few have already been shown with a video on SNL or online and they are funnier with the video. A few jokes are kind of lost if you just hear it but they are still hilarious.

The big one right now is “Jack Sparrow”. They recruit Michael Bolton for the hook but they don’t quite get what they were expecting from him. It’s pretty funny to hear Bolton drop an f bomb and he cracks you up even more if you see the video. Trust me, if you haven’t heard it yet, go look it up on You Tube.

There are a few others that have been shown on tv already. “Motherlover” was a big hit awhile back. Samberg and Justin Timberlake team back up as a kind of sequel to “Dick In A Box”. “Thew It On The Ground” is funny but, again, the video makes it much better. “I Just Had Sex” features Akon, “The Creep” features Nicki Minaj and “Shy Ronnie 2: Ronnie & Clyde” features Rihanna. Make sure you check out all of those videos.

As for the tracks I hadn’t heard before, there are several that I loved. The album opens up with “We’re Back!” as the trio announces their return. But they do it as they explain to everyone just how small their dicks are and they give you lyrics like “I was an eight year old girl before the doctor found my dick”. It’s got a nice beat and they flow with it pretty nicely.

“Mama” is meant to be an ode to their mother but she keeps popping her head in while they are recording the track and they just get more and more pissed at her with each time. The best part is when their dad chimes in and they tell him to shut up and tell the mom, “I can’t believe you had sex with that guy”.

“After Party” features Santigold and starts out by talking about the after party and then tells you what he does next and just keeps going. Each thing he does next gets a little more crazy than the one before.

“No Homo” shows you how you can say something nice to a guy and not come off gay. I’ve seen people use this phrase and it’s pretty stupid to me. If you have to use a line to make sure people don’t think you’re gay, maybe you’re a bit insecure. But the Lonely Island guys make it funny and make fun of people that use the line.

There are several other tracks on the album that I didn’t like as well but most are still funny. “Attracted To Us” features Beck and just lists types of women that aren’t attracted to them. I think they pretty much list every type of woman. Maybe I didn’t like the song because I relate to it too much. Wait, no, women love me. Ok, they don’t…….damnit.

“Rocky” is a story about how they got in a fight with (you guessed it) Rocky and get their asses kicked. The title track features Snoop Dogg and has a beat that I can hear other rappers ripping off but the song just wasn’t as funny as I’d like. “Trouble On Dookie Island” is about a robbery that goes bad and they literally crap themselves as they run. “Japan” is about three nerdy white guys that go to Japan and make their label pay for everything because it’s in the song.

There are also some short skits that I could do without and even though there are a few duds here, the album is worth it for the great tracks. I think if you buy the album, the videos are included which makes it even better.

So you get comedy and some good beats here. I’ll bet several tracks will be played at parties or clubs. My favorites were “Jack Sparrow”, “We’re Back”, “I Just Had Sex” and “Motherlover”. But there are a few others that aren’t far behind. And even though you can probably look up all of these videos on You Tube, it would be nice to own them all and get the tracks that don’t have videos for them.

Overall, it’s a very good comedy album that’s also not a bad rap album. There are a ton of guest appearances and lots of foul language. And come on, doesn’t foul language always make something funnier? I’d definitely recommend that you check out Turtleneck & Chain.

-Charlie Hustle