Lil Dicky

Submission 2,200

About

Lil Dicky (David Andrew Burd) is an American rapper and comedian known for his early rap success on YouTube.

Online History

On April 25th, 2013, Lil Dicky uploaded the official music video for his rap song "Ex-Boyfriend" (shown below, left). The video when viral gaining over 36 million views and 306,000 likes in six years (shown below). Later that year Lil Dicky used Kickstarter to fund his second album (shown below, right). His fundraising campaign raised $113,017^[2]

On July 31, 2015, Lil Dicky released his album Professional Rapper which featured artists Snoop Dogg, T-Pain, Rich Homie Quan, Fetty Wap, Brendon Urie, RetroJace and Hannibal Buress.^[4] The single "Professional Rapper" featuring Snoop Dogg gained over 143 million views and 1.4 million likes in four years. Three years later, Lil Dicky released another hit "Freaky Friday" featuring Chris Brown which reached over 499 million views and four million likes on YouTube in a year (shown below, right). On April 6th, the single peaked at number 8[] on the Billboard Hot 100, and reached number one on the UK Singles Chart.^[3]

On April 18th, 2019, Lil Dicky released his Official Music Video for the song "Earth" which featured Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Halsey, Bad Bunny, PSY, Zac Brown, Miley Cyrus, Sia, Snoop Dogg, Leonardo DiCaprio and countless other celebrities as animated animals. The video raised awareness for climate change. All the proceeds from the single went to environment-focused Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.^[4] The video gained over 71.4 million views and 5.3 million likes in two weeks (shown below, right).

Reputation

On October 17th, 2014, Vice^[6] published an article in which the interviewer describes Lil Dicky saying that, "In the span of half an hour, the ad creative-turned-rapper rattled off his resume to me for no apparent reason, complained about not getting laid on tour, and claimed he had more to lose by rapping than a poor black person might, because unlike a poor black person, he implied, he had job prospects."

Personal Life

David Burd grew up in an upper-middle class family and became a copywriter at an ad agency before pursuing a rap career.^[1] In an interview with GQ Burd attributed his success partially to smoking weed.^[5]