First they delivered cupcakes on a lazy Sunday, then they shoved their dicks in a box, then they, uh, jizzed their pants. . . . We're all spending a lot of Saturday nights (and blowing a zillion work hours) obsessing over the music videos of the Lonely Island, a trio of Bay Area boyhood friends (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone) who've become the biggest pop satirists since Al Yankovic got weird. Thanks to the launchpad of Saturday Night Live (where Samberg is a cast member, and Schaffer and Taccone are writers), Lonely Island's vids have become Internet comets, with popularity (17 million YouTube hits for "Jizz in My Pants") that would turn Kanye green. Now there's an album: Incredibad, due February 10th, up against Lily Allen ("We're gonna beat Lily fo' sho'," Samberg says, ginning a feud), and including the hits as well as new cuts with collaborators like the Strokes' Julian Casablancas. Why an album? "Suffice it to say, the streets wanted it," Schaffer says on a recent afternoon, plopped on a couch near the cramped SNL office he shares with his Lonely Island pals. "Are you talking about the British rapper guy 'the Streets'?" Samberg asks. Taccone and Schaffer laugh. "To be fair, I think we were number 3,000 on the Streets' list of wants," says Taccone. "But he got all of the 2,999," Schaffer says. "And then he was like, well, Streets now wants an album from Lonely Island."

As kids, LI's members were exposed to what Samberg terms "standard Bay Area hippie shit," but their taste gravitated toward hip-hop and soul (Taccone's first concert: Boyz II Men and Keith Sweat). Their music shows a sharp attention to period detail: "Dick in a Box," with Justin Timberlake, was a homage to early-Nineties Color Me Badd-style R&B, while "Jizz" could have been written in a DeLorean by the Pet Shop Boys. It's a little surprising to learn that none of them can capably play an instrument; Taccone admits that "Justin taught us how to use Pro Tools." But in a (brief) earnest moment, Samberg says that making a record has been LI's dream for a long time. "Growing up, we never talked about 'We should all work at Saturday Night Live!'" he says. "We were like, 'Someday, we should make an album. That would be awesome.'"

[From Issue 1071 — February 5, 2009]

Related Stories:

• Video: Inside Lonely Island's dressing room during the group's RS photo shoot
• Review: Incredibad
• More from Issue 1071