I am one of those people. Could you explain what the joke was? Is there a bunch of rap videos that feature boats? Do current rap songs have maritime themes? What is the deal? That segment whooshed me.
Oh, I haven’t watched SNL live in aaaages. If I had no option to fast forward when things get sucky, I would lose my MIIIIND. 
Well someone spent money for suck.
But no, I don’t listen to commercial rap. And I got the whole "we’re on a boat’ thing being a parody of rap videos. I just didn’t think it was funny.
Maybe I’ll give it another look.
Was that in reference to my rant?
If so, then thanks. I have plenty more where that came from.
If not, then, um… gee, how about that weather? sure been having a lot of it lately… nervous laugh
Basically, if you don’t listen to the lyrics, it sounds exactly like every other song featuring T Pain on the radio (and there are a lot). Like, it’s a dead on ringer. They are playing up to the fact about how little the lyrics matter in that genre of music- you can be rapping about dolphins and flip flops and it sounds absolutely no different than any song on the radio. Plus, the more common theme is that in rap, all they talk about his how much money, cars, clothing, and jewelry they have. Here, they are singing:
Of course the lyrics are silly- that’s the point.
Of course, there’s the final theme which is that every goddamn song on the radio has T Pain singing (er, auto tuning) the hook.
Here’s an example of one of the types of songs they are making fun.
“I’m On A Boat” for comparison’s sake.
Of course, all of this reminds me that jokes aren’t funny once you explain them.
I haven’t seen TV on the Radio live, but I’ve heard that they are a good live band. I think the problem has to do with the SNL acoustics or sound system or something, because they’re definitely not the first awesome band that has sounded mediocre on SNL. Spoon and Kings of Leon both sounded kinda bad when they were on even though they’re usually great, and I know there’s some other bands it happened to that I just can’t think of right now. I always get excited when a band I like is going to be the musical guest, but half of the time it’s disappointing.
As for the rest of the episode, there were a few funny parts but I mostly fast forwarded through it. But I did really like “On a Boat.” I thought that was hilarious.
Didn’t Will Ferrell and John C. Reiley already make a parody rap video on a boat from their movie Stepbrothers? It was called “Boats & Hos”.
Why would SNL make another one almost a year later?
This one was totally different. There was only a single boat, and instead of hos there was a mermaid.