Yesterday news broke that comedic hip-hop trio The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone) would be dropping a “visual poem” on Netflix at midnight, and the world was left in collective, exciting and titillating suspense. But now the new day is here and the egregiously long wait is over, and Island and Netflix have pulled the curtain away and revealed their mystery project is a 27-minute visual album chronicling the baseball careers of Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. So, to tally it all up, about 72% of you guessed correctly and well done to you all.
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This year marks the anniversary of the 1989 World Series win for the Oakland Athletics, featuring the duo of Canseco and McGwire, also known as the Bash Brothers. The visual album, THE UNAUTHORIZED BASH BROTHERS EXPERIENCE, depicts the duo one year before the big win and their ascent to fame and their struggles with how to deal with such notoriety…as well as their steroid usage.
“In honor of the 30th anniversary of the Oakland Athletics’ 1989 championship season, The Lonely Island has allowed a greater power to speak through them and create a visual poem/ love letter to their childhood heroes: Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire AKA The Bash Brothers,” per the Netflix press release.
“In a stunning act of artistry/ fandom, Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer (who were born to play Canseco and McGwire due to their equally muscular physiques), have gifted all of Netflix’s 190 countries with a 27 minute musical poem experience honoring The Bash Brothers, the Oakland A’s, and the game of baseball.”
You can watch two segments from the experience below!
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Anyone familiar with the trio's brand of music and humor from their days on SNL (or the criminally underrated movie POPSTAR) can expect the same kind of absurd stylings, tight rhymes, and ridiculous hip-hop music video aesthetic. Across the 27 minutes are several songs that take you through the journey of the baseball legends, seamlessly gliding from bits about them shaking their butts and into ethereal musings about their place on the Earth. So, needless to say, it's pretty bonkers and made even more so thanks to some cameos from the likes of the band Haim, Stephanie Beatriz, Maya Rudolph, Hannah Simone, Jenny Slate, Jim O’Heir and Sterling K Brown as pop sensation Sia. If that last one sounds confusing, it's exactly as it sounds: Brown in a Sia wig and miming her vocals, which is all that you didn't know you needed.
THE UNAUTHORIZED BASH BROTHERS EXPERIENCE is on Netflix now.