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"  The comedy troupe Lonely Island&amp;#039;s digital shorts have been viral sensations since &amp;quot;Lazy Sunday,&amp;quot; the trio&amp;#039;s paean to The Chronicles of Narnia and Magnolia cupcakes, exploded on the Web in late 2005 after airing on Saturday Night Live. On the new CD/DVD  Incredibad, the self-proclaimed &amp;quot;greatest fake MCs on earth&amp;quot; (aka childhood pals Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer) present their finest hip-hop parodies; the collection features a star-studded roster of collaborators, Natalie Portman, Justin Timberlake, T-Pain, Julian Casablancas, and Norah Jones among them. You&amp;#039;ve known one another since puberty\u2014were you busting out comedy routines in middle school?  Jorma: I don&amp;#039;t know if we were doing comedy routines. We were certainly using comedy to avoid getting beaten up. Andy: Well, it was a daily routine that we would be about to get beat up and then crack a joke, and they&amp;#039;d go, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re all right!&amp;quot; What kind of music did you listen to back then?  Jorma: A lot of hip-hop and R&amp;amp;amp;B. Growing up in the Bay Area, that was the music of choice for a lot of our friends. We got into reggae and dancehall stuff in high school.  How did growing up in Berkeley shape your sense of humor?  Akiva: All of our parents are from New York and they&amp;#039;re the kind of people who moved to Berkeley in the late &amp;#039;60s and early &amp;#039;70s\u2014hippies and free thinkers, if you will. I think you can tell that with our comedy, too\u2014a lot of our jokes are very socialist in nature, forward-thinking stuff.  When did you officially form the Lonely Island?  Akiva: In September 2000, we all decided to move to L.A. and try to make it in Hollywood, as they say. Andy: We were like, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the new millennium and it&amp;#039;s time to forge the greatest partnership in the history of mankind.&amp;quot; That was how the meeting went. And then we were like, &amp;quot;You know what? Instead, let&amp;#039;s just try and do comedy.&amp;quot; How do you figure out what works when you&amp;#039;re writing songs?  Akiva: We&amp;#039;ll generally take a ton of Ambien and sleepwalk around, and when we wake up, there are songs recorded and we&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;That was good&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s not put that on the album.&amp;quot; What gave you the idea for &amp;quot;Lazy Sunday&amp;quot;?  Jorma: Before we got on the show, we had watched a lot of Chris Parnell raps on &amp;quot;Weekend Update&amp;quot; and were very excited about his skills on the mike. We were also big fans of early Eazy-E and NWA stuff, so I started mocking up a beat that would sound kind of like that.  Akiva: The short answer is, we had made a song called &amp;quot;The Heist&amp;quot; that was just about two guys rapping hard about boring, square stuff. Jorma and I had made that song back in L.A., and then we were like, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s do a sequel with Andy and Chris rapping as hard as they can about really mundane, not-hard stuff. How&amp;#039;d you get Natalie Portman to do &amp;quot;Natalie&amp;#039;s Rap&amp;quot;?  Andy: She was hosting SNL that week and came into our office and said she wanted to do a rap, and we were skeptical. And then she said she loved Lil&amp;#039; Kim and started reciting filthy Lil&amp;#039; Kim lyrics. We were like, &amp;quot;Come back in one hour and we will have written you a song.&amp;quot;  What celebs do you want to collaborate with that you haven&amp;#039;t been able to get?  Jorma: Bill Pullman or Bill Paxton. It&amp;#039;s got to be both of them. How much are you sticklers for the production value of the music as opposed to the comedy?  Andy: Well the comedy always comes first, but we try and make the music sound as professional as possible. We definitely find that to help us in our cause of idiocy. Akiva: And of socialism.  Any plans to make a straight-up music album?  Jorma: We certainly like music that&amp;#039;s taking itself seriously, but I don&amp;#039;t think we would ever do it. What nonhumorous music are you listening to?  Jorma: Passion Pit, Beirut, Fever Ray. We&amp;#039;re big fans of T-Pain. Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective, Kanye West. Who are your comedic influences?  Andy: We grew up watching the Zucker Brothers, Mel Brooks, and Monty Python, and then SNL once we got old enough\u2014Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Martin Short. And then later in college it was the guys from Stella and The State. David Wain and Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter.  Who would win in a fight, you or the Flight of the Conchords guys?  Akiva, Andy, and Jorma: Us! Jorma: We have one more dude, so it wouldn&amp;#039;t be fair. Andy: Although Jemaine does have height on us. He&amp;#039;s got some bulk. Akiva: Of course, they also have guitars. They could smash us with their guitars\u2014that&amp;#039;s like a third member. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a9785/the-lonely-island-305509/>