When Andy Samberg was a kid, one of his most frequently played CDs wasn’t by a musical act, but by his comedic hero, Adam Sandler.
“Sandler’s first album, I probably listened to like a million times,” Samberg, in a recent interview, said of Sandler’s 1993 CD “They’re All Gonna Laugh at You!”
“It’s like summer camp for me, discovering that with all my friends. ... It was truly inspirational.”
Samberg hopes to have a similar affect on people with this month’s release of “Incredibad,” a new CD/DVD he released with his writing partners Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, childhood friends collectively known as The Lonely Island. While the Lonely Island may not be a household name, the clips the group has produced for “Saturday Night Live” have become viral sensations, like “ ... in my Pants” and “ ... in a Box,” which featured a memorable appearance by Justin Timberlake.
Those songs are included on “Incredibad,” along with a DVD with shorts from the show, as well as new material.
“I think if you’re into what we do, we’re delivering on that in spades,” said Samberg.
It was the Lonely Island’s digital short film, “Lazy Sunday,” that lit the spark for Samberg’s white-hot career. When “Saturday Night Live” aired it in December 2005, Samberg was a goofy 27-year-old rookie, basically unknown to even the show’s most devout fans. Within a week, the video — a geeky, hip-hop paean to “The Chronicles of Narnia” — was viewed more than a million times on the Internet. Since then, the Lonely Island’s shorts, like Natalie Portman’s “Natalie’s Rap,” have become instant Internet hits (Their new single, “I’m On a Boat” featuring T-Pain has topped iTunes’ music video chart).
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Celebrity Sightings
The new CD/DVD features their greatest hits as well as new collaborations with top stars like Jack Black, Norah Jones, and Julian Casablancas of The Strokes.
“We just sat down at the beginning and were like, ‘Whose careers can we ruin?’ And then we just picked names out of a hat,” Taccone joked.
“It’s all people that we’re just huge fans of, so, we’re thrilled that they’re on there,” Schaffer said. “And every time I hit play on a song, it’s like, us, us and I’m like, ‘Eh, Eh’ and then they come on and I’m like, ‘Hey!’ Because we’re just fans of those people.”