With several viral videos on YouTube and hits on the Billboard charts, Lil Dicky has been
impossible to miss.
But not too long ago, David Burd, the man behind the Lil Dicky alias, was only dreaming
of stardom.
Here's his untold truth.
The Kickstarter campaign
When Burd posted his first music video, "Ex-Boyfriend," to YouTube, he couldn't have anticipated the
response from fans.
The video went viral, earning more than one million views in less than 24 hours.
Determined to ride the wave, the rapper continued posting videos, turning into somewhat of a
YouTube sensation.
"If you don't know who I am, no worries, doesn't matter.
All you really need you to know is that I'm successful."
Yet, despite his low production costs, Burd needed capital.
So he leaned on his loyal following for financial support in the form of a Kickstarter campaign.
"Today I'm coming to you not just as a rapper, but also as a man.
A man in need of funding."
With a goal of 70 grand, Burd stated,
"I've got no money, and I really think I'm on to something.
I want to create a phase two of this entire operation, which I think can be even bigger
than the first phase."
His plan worked.
Fans raised $113,000, and Lil Dicky created his first full album, Professional Rapper.
Less-than-stellar tour life
While Lil Dicky made going viral look easy, the live show and tour portion of his career
have been another story.
"I mean, honestly, like, I feel like I've been prepping for this moment mentally for,
like, years."
After his first concert in Philadelphia to launch his tour, Lil Dicky discovered just
how challenging performing really is.
In a review of the show for Philadelphia magazine, Joe Coufal wrote,
"You could tell that he seemed to get a little gassed by the end of his set… and the crowd
simmered a little with him."
Even Burd told HipHopDX,
"Immediately after I began rapping, I could tell how much more tiring this was going to
be than simply rehearsing or rapping in my room."
When asked about it, Burd told Noisey that touring is, quote, "less eventful than you'd
think."
Perhaps that's one of the reasons why shortly before his "Life Lessons Tour" was set to
begin, Lil Dicky officially postponed it, according to XXL.
Heading to the small screen
Burd never hid the fact that his end goal has been comedy, admitting to Maxim that his
early raps were purely an attempt to get noticed by TV and film producers.
He said,
"I wanted to do something to get noticed for being funny.
But I had no connections in that space…
I could always kind of rap pretty casually, so I thought about rapping as a manageable
way in."
Well, that dream is finally coming true for Burd, as FX ordered a pilot episode of a show
co-written by the rapper.
Burd, who will star in the pilot, described the show as "the story of [his] life," telling
Fuse,
"Imagine Curb Your Enthusiasm where the protagonist is a 29-year-old rapper."
His views on hip hop
Lil Dicky may have gained overnight fame, but that doesn't mean he has no critics.
It probably didn't help that Burd once stated in a since-deleted blog post, via Noisey,
that rap isn't relatable…
"Unless you're an extremely stupid person that began life as a poor, violent man, only
to see your fortunes turn once you started rapping."
Burd then said that while he agrees it's notable to go from nothing to something, he claimed
of himself,
"I had a very safe route that would make me relatively content for the rest of my life.
And I pretty much put that aside…
I think that's a brave thing."
"I really feel like this is exactly what I'm meant to do in life."
While L.D. certainly took chances in his early rap career, Noisey's Drew Millard pointed
out the flaws in L.D.'s claims, noting,
"Unlike a poor black person [Lil Dicky] had job prospects."
"I was gonna smoke, but I thought why would I do that I'm takin' this really seriously."
Making it rain
Having landed a job with ad agency right out of college, it's hard to say how much Burd's
former advertising experience benefited his rap career, but it certainly didn't hurt.
While LD credits his old job for showing him how to make "legit looking videos," he also
seems to have grasped the concept of a concept video.
"And we're shooting a music video all about how we can make the most epic rap video ever
for no money."
Take "$ave Dat Money," for example.
To make the video, Lil Dicky borrowed cars and houses for free.
The rapper claimed he saved $30,000 this way, as noted by Billboard, but the video's concept
is really what's important.
Plus, if Lil Dicky was really embodying the everyman rapper, he wouldn't have made the
"Pillow Talking" video, which cost $700,000 to create, making it the 49th most expensive
video ever made, according to Consequence of Sound.
Best rapper alive?
Lil Dicky often portrays himself as the antithesis of the average rapper, a somewhat nerdy and
awkward outsider in the genre.
But, though he may look and sound like a guest in hip hop, he feels that he deserves all
the recognition he gets.
Lil Dicky's made some claims that would make even hip hop legends blush.
When he said he considered himself "the greatest rapper alive", via HipHopDX, he had not yet
released a full studio album.
When he was named to the 2016 Freshman class for XXL, the rapper said he would have been
"offended" had he not been named.
He remembered his first mixtape, telling HipHopDX,
"I did So Hard to be noticed for being funny.
And then towards the end of it I started to really evolve as a rapper and noticed how
good I had become."
Perhaps that led him to write his song, "Russell Westbrook on a Farm," a track that he calls
"a masterpiece," per the outlet.
But not everyone is buying that claim.
Music reviewer and YouTuber Anthony Fantano said in his review of Professional Rapper,
"The very notion that Lil Dicky is going to change the game with this music… it's just
preposterous."
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