The Lonely Island Just Dropped ‘The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience’ On Netflix, Their Lovingly Hilarious Tribute To All Things Oakland

Beyonce had her Lemonade.

The Lonely Island now have their Bash Brothers.

With less than 24 hours notice, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone dropped their first concept album and “visual poem” as a half-hour Netflix special, titled The Lonely Island Presents The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience.

The trio first met in junior high school in Berkeley, Calif., in the early 1990s, so they would have been Little Leaguers when the Oakland Athletics ruled the majors, reaching the World Series three straight seasons from 1988-1990. When The Lonely Island began performing live in concert last year, Samberg and Schaffer did treat audiences to short snippets of songs and videos of themselves as Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. As evidenced below.

Canseco became the first Major League Baseball player to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season in 1988. The year before that, McGwire hit 49 home runs as a rookie. They’d also bash elbows together instead of high-fiving; hence, their nickname as the Bash Brothers.

Never mind that Samberg looks like Samberg, while Schaffer’s take on McGwire resembles a mash-up of Justin Timberlake with Danny McBride’s Kenny Powers.

Their half-hour Netflix special is not just a collection of raps, but also a love letter to the East Bay and the late 1980s.

Directed and edited by Schaffer with Mike Diva, the opening shot features the BART running past the Coliseum, and the first rap references the nearby Hilltop Mall in Richmond, as well as Danville’s Blackhawk gated community. Other songs hark back to Alf, Alex P. Keaton, Kathy Ireland, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Soloflex, NordicTrack and SkyTel pagers.

Jorma Taccone mostly only cameos in this, but stay for the credits to see his biggest cameo and solo rap.

In between, dream sequences, short sketches and even spoken word stitch together the music videos into a cohesive throughline. And there are plenty of celebrity guest stars making appearances in those videos. Sterling K. Brown tries to help the fellas seduce Jenny Slate and Hannah Simone in “Oakland Nights,” lip-synching over the parts actually sung by Sia.

The song “IHOP Parking Lot” finds Maya Rudolph, Stephanie Beatriz and Haim intimidating the boys to “shake that butt.”

The full track listing includes: “Jose and Mark,” “Oakland Nights,” “Bikini Babe Workout,” “IHOP,” “IHOP Parking Lot,” “Daddy,” “Uniform On,” “Feed The Beast,” “Focused AF,” “Focus on the Game,” “Let’s Bash” and “Joe Montana Theme.” (You can listen to all the songs via YouTube, as well as other streaming audio services.)

But if you want to see the video, you’ll have to hop on Netflix. Not so 1989. Very much 2019.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch The Lonely Island Presents The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience on Netflix