Lil Dicky the Rapper Makes Way for Dave the TV Star

“I had been so focused on the task at hand that I hadn’t stepped back to reflect until I was there looking in the mirror,” Burd said of that day. “I knew how hard I had worked. I felt real satisfaction having given it my all.”

He was also surprisingly certain about what he’d achieve. “I’ve always been very self-believing and felt I was destined for stardom,” he said, with his trademark bluntness about what he calls “my almost foolish level of confidence.”

Burd hoped “Ex-Boyfriend,” which like most of his songs, has its share of sexual references but leans more heavily on self-deprecating wit, would launch his career by garnering perhaps 100,000 views within a year. He was wrong: the video was watched more than 1 million times in just 24 hours. Dave Burd, ad agency employee, had become Lil Dicky, rap’s hottest newcomer.

“That was the best day of my life, because it showed I am who I thought I was,” said Burd, who turns 32 later this month.

That dramatic bathroom scene is not part of “Dave,” the new comedy about Burd’s transformation, premiering Wednesday on FXX, that is otherwise chockablock with moments taken from Burd’s actual rap life.

“Dave has a bucket of shameful, embarrassing, amazing stories,” said the show’s co-creator Jeff Schaffer, who was also a creator of “The League” and an executive producer on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Seinfeld.” This gave him instant credibility with Burd, who idolizes Larry David.

Burd had been publicly stating for years that he wanted to create his own TV show. He was eventually introduced to Schaffer, who after several conversations was sold on Burd’s commitment and convinced there was enough material for a series.

“Even if he was an accountant, his interactions with people would be worthy of a TV show,” Schaffer said, adding that he believes Burd has “a lot of Larry David in him” and is a natural comedic writer. “But he was like a rap Don Quixote tilting at the ‘legitimacy’ windmill.”

Schaffer said several networks were interested in “Dave,” but he had a strong relationship with FX Networks and the programming executive Nick Grad, who happened to be a big Lil Dicky fan. (FXX is the network’s comedy-focused channel.) The series is also executive produced by comedian Kevin Hart and “Superbad” director Greg Mottola, who credits Burd with having “more to say than his nom de plume would imply.” (Mottola decided to direct several episodes himself because of “the questions of race and gender that the show grapples with,” he said.)

The pilot begins just after Lil Dicky has gone viral, and is trying to convert instant fame into a career. (Well, technically it opens with Dave detailing to a doctor all the things wrong with his genitalia.) Later, he’s so eager to work with rap star YG he withdraws his bar mitzvah money to pay for the privilege — a symbol of how different Dave’s path is from most rappers.

Dave also meets GaTa, who is also on the hip-hop scene’s fringes and later becomes Lil Dicky’s hype man. GaTa is, in fact, Lil Dicky’s real life hype man and, like Burd, has no previous acting experience.

The remaining co-stars are experienced actors, including Taylor Misiak as Dave’s girlfriend Ally and Andrew Santino as Mike, Dave’s roommate and eventually his manager. Throughout the episodes, many scenes are improvised to heighten the naturalism as Lil Dicky tries to transform himself from a viral gimmick into a respected rapper.

“The arc of the first season is, how do you go from having people view your video to being viewed as an actual rap artist?” Schaffer said.

Burd, with typical modesty, said his rookie TV effort has exceeded his own high expectations, especially considering he has “not made a show before, never acted before and everything I’ve written has had to rhyme. I feel I’m destined to be amazing at this craft.”

“I’ll be brutally disappointed if it isn’t one of the most explosive comedies on television,” he said.

Burd’s statements often seem over the top, but in conversation, he has none of his alter ego’s braggadocios manner. He speaks in a low-key, thoughtful tone, whether he’s praising FX executives for their helpful notes, or telling you why he is, definitively, obviously, a genius and the greatest at whatever he does. It’s as if Muhammad Ali brought in Eli Manning to recite his prefight poetry.

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“Dave” shares Burd’s real back story: a Jewish kid from the Philadelphia suburbs who got good grades and worked in advertising after college. “David always dreamed big,” his mother, Jeanne Burd, wrote in an email. “He was not afraid to say what was on his mind and he was always fearless and confident.”

While Burd’s family thought he had found the perfect outlet working in advertising, he had bigger dreams: He wanted to be a rapper, a comedian with his own TV show or an NBA player. (“That’s not ruled out yet,” he deadpanned about the third option. “I definitely train twice a week so we’ll see — I’m a never-say-never type of guy.”)

Burd’s ad agency job proved inspirational in a pragmatic way. “Making music videos had seemed so unachievable but I saw all these things getting produced on a day in day out basis, and learned how technologically feasible creating high-end art was,” he said.

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Burd started producing his first mixtape in 2011. His parents tried to dissuade him from releasing the risqué “Ex-Boyfriend” video, but his grandiose predictions came shockingly true: Each song and video was more successful than the last, and a Kickstarter campaign to fund new production outpaced the goal.

Something like legitimacy came in 2015, when he released his first official album, “Professional Rapper.” It featured appearances by Snoop Dogg and Fetty Wap, topped both the comedy charts and the rap charts and reached No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200. The title track, featuring Snoop Dogg, now has more than 95 million Spotify listens and 173 million YouTube views. The single “Freaky Friday,” his 2018 collaboration with R&B singer Chris Brown, drew more than 465 million listens and 583 million views.

“I always took him seriously,” GaTa said. “Because he’s a white rapper you knew it was not going to happen overnight, but it happened fast because he has a vision and he’s driven and he’s that talented.”

Unsurprisingly, Burd agreed with that assessment. “In my heart I feel I’m one of the best rappers alive,” he said.

Burd’s rise hasn’t been without its hiccups. His perfectionism, “hyper neuroticism and worry” slow production — he has yet to finish a second album. (He says the relentless pace of making a TV show causes “extreme anxiety, but in a way, being forced to make decisions is good.”)

More significantly, he has waded mouth-first into plenty of controversy. “White Dude” offers some sharp lines like: “Everybody naturally assumes I’m a great person/I get a fair shot at the life I deserve/I mean I could underachieve my way into any college in the country.” But the song and video also featured more troublesome moments that seemed to obliviously revel in white privilege: “Happy that my name ain’t stupid/Dave coulda been Daquan with a few kids.”

Burd was defensive in interviews, most infamously one that appeared in 2014 on Noisey, the Vice music blog. He claimed he had “everything to lose” in his middle-class white life by becoming a rapper, and that it wasn’t his fault if his mostly white-dude fans don’t understand “brilliant satire.”

“Freaky Friday” drew even more flak: Lil Dicky and Brown switch bodies, so Lil Dicky, suddenly African American, uses the N-word with abandon, while Brown makes light of his history of domestic abuse.

GaTa believes Burd “meant no harm,” he said, so he counseled his friend, “you’re coming from a pure place, so don’t hold back.”

But Drew Millard, who wrote that Noisey article, said in an interview that someone with a marketing background should understand the implications of these videos. “But he knows what is working in the marketplace and does not care,” he said.

(Jon Caramanica, a pop critic for The Times, wrote that Lil Dicky’s work “displays a lumpy jumble of entitlement and irony.”)

Burd maintains a “strong belief in my own moral compass, and I really believe in the art of the joke,” he said. But he no longer wields the word “satire” as a shield and has since removed “White Dude” from his YouTube Channel. He admitted he regrets some past decisions and said he owns his mistakes.

“I’m maturing every day, and certain things I thought and said are a far cry from what I think now,” he said.

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“Dave” will follow a similar trajectory. Schaffer said the plan is for the TV Dave “to start pretty oblivious to his privilege and grow from there through his growing friendship with GaTa.”

GaTa’s character also allows the show a chance to change its tone with an episode about his real-life struggles with bipolar disorder. “It was tough to dig into those thoughts emotionally but I want to help other people in my situation,” GaTa said.

Burd knew the switch in tones was risky but ambition is central to his vision of himself. “It’s a big swing and if you miss it looks terrible, but if you connect it adds so much more depth to the show,” he said. “This can change people’s lives.”

Schaffer knows Burd can sound absurdly self-aggrandizing, but he cautions people not to dismiss him.

“Dave is always talking about being the biggest entertainer in history, even though he looks like a piece of broccoli had a bar mitzvah,” Schaffer said. “Everybody who has doubted him ends up being very wrong.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

Lil Dicky the Rapper Makes Way for Dave the TV Star

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