Lonely Island (The) Biography

The Lonely Island is an American comedy troupe composed of Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg, best known for its musical parodies. The group is from Berkeley, California, and is currently based in New York City. The group began creating live comedy skits in junior high school and continued to do so, expanding its repertoire to comedic shorts, music parody (both songs and videos), and one full-length television pilot, before coming to the attention of Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Once on the show, they wrote "Lazy Sunday," a better-produced music parody video much like the group's previous work. It became an instant internet success, and led to the creation of similar digital shorts that also aired on Saturday Night Live. The Emmy-winning "Dick in a Box", "Jizz in My Pants", "Like a Boss", "I Just Had Sex" and the Grammy-nominated "I'm on a Boat" have subsequently had huge success both on the show and on the internet and prompted the recording and release of an album, Incredibad, in which the group moves in a more musical direction.

In August 2007, the group premiered its first feature film, Hot Rod.

With increasing recognition, the trio was invited to write sections of the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, which Jimmy Fallon hosted. Impressed with the group's material, he brought the trio to the attention of Lorne Michaels, the producer of Saturday Night Live, who agreed to see them. Samberg fulfilled a lifelong dream and auditioned for the show. He was the only member of the group who had also been doing stand-up comedy in his free time. He was called back for a second audition a few weeks later and was ultimately invited to be a cast member; Schaffer and Taccone were invited to join the writing staff based on their work in the trio. Since their arrival, the group has written some of the most popular bits in recent SNL history, most notably, the SNL Digital Shorts and MacGruber.

Uncertain if Michaels would approve of a wacky pre-recorded skit on the show, the group borrowed a video camera and filmed a faux lettuce commercial starring Samberg and Will Forte, a fellow SNL cast member. They presented the finished product to Michaels in December 2005, who liked the short and agreed to air it. It was first of what would be come a regular feature of the program, called Saturday Night Live's Digital Shorts. "Lazy Sunday," the second digital short, enjoyed runaway success in the virtual media, as fans responded with T-shirts and response videos. Many of these shorts have skyrocketed to internet fame, including "Dick in a Box" (with Justin Timberlake), "Natalie's Rap" (with Natalie Portman), "Iran So Far" (with Adam Levine), "Jizz in My Pants" (got 96 million views on youtube.com), and "I'm on a Boat" (with T-Pain), the latter of which was nominated on December 2, 2009, for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration at the 52nd Grammy Awards. One of the more recent songs Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg made is called "Motherlover," a sequel of “Dick in a Box,” which aired on SNL on May 9, 2009. Another recent short is "On the Ground," which aired October 2009. It features Andy Samberg throwing various objects on the ground for various reasons, often blaming the "system." Another short, "I Just Had Sex" featuring Akon, was aired on December 18, 2010. The corresponding video gained over 17 million views within one week of being posted on Youtube, and to date has clocked up 43 million views. Their most recent short, "The Creep" was released on January 29th 2011. The song was released on Saturday Night Live and it features rapper Nicki Minaj.

"Dick in a Box" won the 2007 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. Credited for its production are Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Justin Timberlake, in addition to Katreese Barnes and Asa Taccone for music. Based on 1990s contemporary R&B, such as Keith Sweat, Jodeci, and R. Kelly, the song is about giving gift-wrapped genitalia as a Christmas present to one's girlfriend.
Source: wikipedia.org
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