E-40

They were like, ooh, okay, well... We'll trust you guys, but ooh.

Do you want to talk about the influence of the style of the song, Andy, too? Because that is also Bay Area related.

Yes. By the way, shout out our friend Keith Schofield who did help us direct that.

I thought that was Beck.

Okay.

Our buddy Drew. Yeah. Bay Area, also Bay.

Yes. Yeah, the first one was Just Two Guys. We like sports is the second one. As Keith said, we went to Kmart, and we bought the dumpiest jeans we could find, and we found a lot of cool, really, really baggy T-shirts that had things like Stewie from Family Guy on it that said, What recession? With him with money that we thought were really cool. Just baggy.

It takes just as long to shoot something that looks shitty as it does.

Well, in each of our songs, there's a breakdown and the breakdown is usually a pretty deep hip-hop reference.

Yeah, that's Pick a Bigger Weapon, and then this is Genocide and Juice, yeah.

That's a Nori. That one's less obscure, but we did Tried by 12, Carried by 6, which we got that reference.

Yeah, we did 21 Savage. Then we threw to Shy Ronnie. You know him, you love him.

The song is called Pimps, and it's really almost like a two-fold song, because it's Fat Cat's Bigger Fish is the lead-in, which you need to listen to to really get the vibe.

Oh, there's also a lot of one-upmanship, right? There's always like, I also drink whiskey and we smoke cigars. Like, never wanting to be excluded. Don't believe me?

That's our hot tub. Yeah. Didn't have to pay for that location.

What are some lyrics off of that? I can't remember that one as well.

Yes, that is the one.

Yes. It's basically like a guy stumbles into this party as a waiter to like rob people. It's a fancy dress party. It starts with that. And it's all these rich white people who like run the world with all of their giant multi-conglomerate like businesses and whatever. And then each white rich person, they talk about how they've been dabbling in rap and and they go into a rap guy voice.

It's a testament to how funny Norah is because that could be considered a waste of Norah Jones. But not for her. I think she was pretty into it.

I feel like they sent us a gift basket, though.

Oh, that's nice. I feel like somebody there was like, well, that's funny.

Great. Yes, that was a Newmark beat from Jurassic 5. And I believe we couldn't clear the sample, so he replayed it, and it still sounded awesome. But for us, we always liked albums that really felt like albums when they had fun fuck-around tracks. N.W.A. did a pretty fucking awesome with, like, Yeah, let's get off the keys. And like the far side would do it.

Like, it just felt like you got to know the band.

Always wanted to just have that sort of feel to make it feel like it was a complete story.

And that's what this was.

Yeah. As I recall, we were just, like, getting over the mic, and, like, I remember Colin Hanks was over, right? So it was literally, like, just, like, get up and say something. Just do it. Yeah, he's on it.

Come back in and have a round of whiskey. Guess what? All is forgiven. That's my favorite. All is forgiven.

It could have been called a scramble, not a song, certainly.

That's basically what it was.

They are Punch You in the Jeans and Incredibad. Well, Punch You in the Jeans, I will always have a real soft spot in my heart for that because for all the ones that came out of us just saying stuff to each other as friends, was that one that you started, Andy, of just saying, I'll punch you in the jeans?

Yes. It was something he specifically did to me.

I think that was based off the beat, too, because it felt like a Jurassic 5-y kind of thing.

Yeah, there's a lot of agreement.

You don't have to be wearing them for us to punch it.

Yeah, we couldn't afford any of the samples, so Andy did a very good job.

Very nice. Wasn't that great? Oh my God, he's so nice.

We definitely thought about when making the sequel. We were like, you know what? Who's really going to like it? Got to make it for everyone.

Edgar Wright's heart.

See, I always thought of it as that you dip them in slime, but then you're also getting two punches, whap, whap, and so that brings you down to- Oh, that's what, so each punch- One punch brings you down to 500, the second one brings you down to, yeah, that's how I left, right combo.

I forget, but we were definitely... Yes, in a skit. The normal guy skit starts with you guys talking about how you're going to go to a party and drink Santana DVX.

Here's the thing. And Edgar mentioned it like that. Maybe that lyric doesn't have to do with punching. But see, I think underneath at all, it does, you know, two whaps.

Just to compliment Edgar, the fact that he likes our dumb stuff this much is so nice coming from what giant fans we are of his work. He's just such a talented dude.

Yes. So much energy put towards something that is so dumb.

We're relentless in our own album mention.

I feel like, Andy, you had that as a title for our potential group for a while. Was that a high school thing?

Yeah, we all definitely had grumpy moments of like not quite understanding an idea, but I don't remember it ever lasting more than like 20 minutes.

For sure that, but not an origin story like a superhero, which is kind of more what this is really. Right. But I think that it's like when we were little. Yeah, sure.

Well played by Akiva as the alien.

I mean, sometimes, Keith, I feel like you're going to have Alzheimer's.

By the way, that sounds fucking good. We sound pretty good on that. You do sound really good.

It was a Stevie Ray Vaughan sample chopped up and then we couldn't actually clear the Stevie Ray Vaughan. So then it was replayed by Brian Sperber, who mixed our album. I'm remembering so many things, you guys, today.

He needs our seed. Yeah, and he's maybe a little pervy and he's maybe manipulating us a little bit. Story as old as time.

We're just taking him at his word. He does mention that we have to drink some wine coolers.

Well, first of all, we say we're in very quickly. Yeah. There's not a lot of debate. There's not a lot of deliberation.

I think that's 100% Akiva. I don't know if he remembers it or not.

Yeah, Children's Story and then Paul Revere.

Paul Revere is a goodie.

Yeah. Wait, what is the ice cube that we love? Today was a good day? No, no, the kids won.

That's Hickory Dickory Duck.

That was the song that we would go back to, like, friends of ours from the Bay.

It's still amazing. Oh, fuck.

Yeah. It's that more throwback-y old school, very chopped up samples. He didn't do that many samples, but he was just incredible at chopping things up. He made probably five albums before this. I got to know Zone from Brian, Danger Mouse Burton. He just sent us a bunch of stuff. Do we have anything else with him? Is that the only song that we did with him?

Yeah, I think that's a safe bet. Anybody who makes a sparkling wine, I think it's safe to say that they did all right in the sheets.

I will say this was a song that these guys came up with the premise and had written a couple of your first lyrics and I walked into the room on this one. We've all had this experience when that happens and it's a good one. You walk in and you're just like, oh, what a gift. This is fucking hilarious.

On this song, which I was obsessed with this song because I loved the song trying to be good. I just love the idea of hyping up a guy who's supposed to be amazing and then he sucks. We had Lenny Pickett do sax for this song, just little squeaks. I don't know why we needed Lenny to do it, but he sent us a bunch of real shitty little squeaks and he's so talented. they sounded too good.

So we had to go with a demo that was just this shitty fucking synthesizer that we had that we made dumb, horrible Casio sax sounds that we were just like, it's funnier than Lenny trying to be bad.

Yeah.

That routinely happened to us because we would always record like a million versions. We'd always like double our lyrics to make them sound beefier and cooler. And then you'd get like something from E40 or Jack would come in or Julian Casablanca. And you'd get these like, like E40 was a one take. And you're like, he just knocked it out. Where you're like, okay, that's how it's done, I guess.

Right.

Are we talking about the Doritos commercial?

I take full ownership and responsibility for this.

Akiva had to go when we really needed him most. And me and Andy decided it would be really funny to have the spokesman for Doritos be normal guy. Turns out America disagreed.

Basically, after they tested, they came to us and they were like, look, we can't air this on the Super Bowl. So can you just say that you didn't make a commercial? The competition was so great this year, you just wanted to give up your spot. We were like, no problem.

I think immediately, yeah. I think he decided to go into wines right after that.

But I will say this. For a while, I was recording very funny people like Will Arnett and Craig Robinson and some others. I was recording them watching what we had made and just dying laughing and then sending it to the people at Doritos being like, you sure? You sure you don't want to hear it?