Lil Dicky

Depending on your vantage point, Dave Burd, aka Lil Dicky, is either America’s funniest rapper or its most rap-savvy comedian, thanks to a persona that’s part Compton, part Catskills. As a well-to-do kid growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Burd (born in 1988) knew he didn’t have the natural street cred to pass himself off as a genuine rapper; he initially picked up the mic as a gimmick to break into the world of film and television as a comedic actor. But while his 2013 single “Ex-Boyfriend” went viral with its profane yet charmingly self-deprecating commentary about his sexual inadequacies, Dicky’s flow couldn’t be denied: Combining rapid-fire rhymes with a unique nasal rasp, he sounded like Eminem with a three-packs-a-day habit. Dicky laid on the class-clown meta-rap schtick extra thick on his skit-heavy 2015 full-length debut Professional Rapper, but his musical ambitions were no joke—this guy could battle-rap against Snoop Dogg one moment and then craft sensitive power ballads with Panic! At the Disco’s Brendon Urie the next. Dicky’s celebrity-wrangling skills have only become more formidable: He scored his first Top 10 single in 2018 with the cheeky body-swapping Chris Brown collaboration “Freaky Friday”, while his 2019 eco-themed charity single “Earth” corralled A-list guests like Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Ariana Grande to contribute their finest animal noises on what was essentially an R-rated alt-rap answer to “We Are the World”. And then the following year, Burd’s dream of becoming a TV star finally came true: On the FXX comedy series Dave, Burd presents a fictionalised Curb Your Enthusiasm-style spin on a rap success story that was already stranger than fiction to begin with.