he last time you agreed to “get together” with three people off the internet, it almost inevitably ended with you tossing off an immigrant German barworker calling himself “Claude” into the mouth of a depressed, balding 54 year-old professor of languages. Tanya Morgan don't fuck with Adultfriendfinder. They spend their broadband time knocking about on one of those lovable message boards where people all agree that The Roots are “good,” bling is “bad,” and the term “net-cee” is something other than the greatest embarrassment in rap history. And, as the kids are wont to do these days, Von Pea (representing Brooklyn) and Ilyas and Donwill (Cincinnati) decided that it'd be a bit of a giggle to trade MP3 demos between themselves. A mere three years later and Moonlighting takes up 80 MB of space on your hard drive. It's nice to see Web 2.0 in top form.

So, what do they sound like? A clue: they met on an internet message board. Another: they brag about their success when it comes to picking up girls off MySpace. This is straight-up mellow, regressive, laid-back, “back in the day,” goofy, nerdy, thick-lensed rap. It's also really, really great. Tanya Morgan come across like Little Brother with the smugness turned down to zero and the “good songs” turned up to about eight-and-a-half. There's nothing on this album to make you think, dance, or feel. You'll be straight Asperger's by the time it’s over. What they’ve got, simply, is some of the finest ear candy you're likely to have wash over you in 2006. Radox with beats.

Opener “The Warm Up” runs through all your favourite undie-rap cutesy braggadocio punchlines, with sufficient levels of wit and wordplay (“Just because you get on my nerves, doesn't mean I feel you”) over suitably fiddly jazz guitar and horn stabs. In the process, they also become, roughly, the 17th rap act to have rhymed “Kate Moss” with “steak sauce.”

“Take The L (Get It!)” combines “just run up seventeen flights of stairs” flows, an oddly 1993-flavoured chorus (they even name check PM Dawn at one point), and a promise to “shit on a wannabe contender.” Maybe they have spent time on Adultfriendfinder after all. They switch styles as well: “Just Cause I Got Locks” is the obligatory reggae track, which also doubles up as the obligatory “I find many practices currently engaged in by the police unsatisfactory” track. “Pretty” goes 50% some soulboy's interpretation of The Big O's second finest hour, 50% po-faced recital of the lyrics to “Caught Out There.”

It's hard to imagine an album with as small a worldview as Moonlighting: Tanya Morgan aren't going to change anything at all, they probably don't even want to. This is on some straight 1997 “We just do our thing, and if anyone else likes it that's a bonus” shit. Still, 40 minutes pass a lot more entertainingly when Tanya's around.