Band: The Lonely Island
Release: The Wack Album
Release Date: Out Now!
We all knew The Lonely Island would pull it out of the bag for their third and brilliant ‘The Wack Album’. Saturday Night Live hasn’t been the same without the trio’s collective sense of humour and with this album they have retained their renowned jabs at pop culture, sexual customs, language and trends. But, whilst maintaining this and upping their songwriting and production style, it’s impressive how real are The Lonely Island faux rappers are beginning to sound. With ‘The Wack Album’ covering a mighty 20 tracks with an epic list of guests from Adam Levine, Billie Joe Armstrong and Justin Timberlake to Hugh Jackman we better stop talking about the band and more about the music.
Although they are first and foremost comedians ‘The Wack Album’ holds up musically just as much as lyrically. Single ‘YOLO’ featuring Adam Levine and Kendrick Lamar emphasises the ridiculous use of the abbreviated ‘You only live once’. The problem with this track is that you forget how ridiculous it truly is and find yourself singing it, forgetting that others may think you are being serious about the use of ‘yolo’. The hilarious ‘3 -Way (The Golden Rule) featuring Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga was originally released in 2011 but reflects a song more characteristic of an 90’s R&B song, relaying ‘It’s okay when it’s in a three way’. And ‘Hugs’ follows suit, featuring Pharrell Williams replacing the word ‘fuck’ for ‘hugs’, a pattern that follows ‘I Don’t Give A Honk’; both songs sounding so legit you sometimes miss out on the brilliance of the lyrics.
‘Semicolon’ plays with its guest Solange hooking in the proper use of the punctuation, whilst ‘I Fucked My Aunt’ sees absurd incest admitions from T-Pain. Within these oddly hilarious tracks falls ‘Spell It Out’ which begins on a funny note but increasingly becomes boring, which sometimes shows that sometimes more is not better with some of the twenty tracks losing out a little. Some of the tracks follow more ‘bro’ themes, ‘We Are A Crowd’, ‘The Compliments’ and ‘Spring Break Anthem’ lightly commenting on the trio’s thoughts on gay marriage.
Grown up from 2009’s ‘Incredibad’ but still incredible, The Lonely Island have hit up another track list of hilarious, addictive and sing along tracks albeit a few slackers. The album covers a variety of musical styles varying old school rap, auto tuning and dubstep tunes. With a long list of collaborators and a step up on production ‘The Wack Album’ is another great to add to The Lonely Island’s already well-established discography, and we will be blissfully unaware as we sing along to the lyrics this summer.
9/10
