David Burd, performing as Lil Dicky, built a career as a rapper, comedian, and actor whose rapid delivery echoes Twista while his comedic and absurdist sensibility aligns with the Lonely Island crew. He initially viewed rapping as a stepping stone toward writing for television and film, yet the 2013 upload of “Ex-Boyfriend,” which accumulated one million views in seven days, convinced him the path had already opened. His first full-length project, Professional Rapper, entered the Billboard 200 at number seven and simultaneously led the Top Rap, Comedy, and Independent Albums tallies. A second viral moment arrived in 2018 via the Chris Brown collaboration “Freaky Friday,” an international hit that later anchored an autobiographical comedy series, Dave, which Burd co-produced and starred in starting in 2020; music from its three seasons was compiled on the 2024 release Penith: The Dave Soundtrack.
Raised in Philadelphia’s suburbs, Burd finished at the head of his class when he graduated from the Richmond Robins School of Business in 2010. He relocated to San Francisco, spent the next two years privately writing rhymes, recording demos, and storyboarding videos under the Lil Dicky name, then finally shared the material publicly. The same “Ex-Boyfriend” track appeared on the 2013 mixtape So Hard, while “White Crime,” containing the line “Walk into the movie with my pants full/Twix, bag of chips, plus a Snapple,” surfaced in 2014. “Classic Male Pregame” followed in 2015 alongside Professional Rapper, an album that included appearances from Snoop Dogg, Fetty Wap, Hannibal Buress, and others, plus the single “$ave Dat Money” featuring Fetty Wap and Rich Homie Quan.
The set repeated the earlier chart success and ranked among the year’s strongest independent releases. After issuing a 2017 EP with his side project Brain, Lil Dicky resurfaced in 2018 with “Freaky Friday,” which topped Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart and reached number eight on the Hot 100. In April 2019 he issued the charity single “Earth” together with an animated video timed to Earth Day; proceeds supported environmental organizations, and the track—intended to spotlight climate change—featured more than thirty prominent vocalists such as Ariana Grande, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Hart, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, and John Legend, ultimately peaking at number 17 on the Hot 100. That same year Burd partnered with producer Jeff Schaffer to create the FXX series Dave, a comedy drawn from his own experiences that ran three seasons and yielded the 2024 soundtrack Penith: The Dave Soundtrack.
