Lil Dicky

Rapper Lil Dicky became a viral sensation with awkward rhymes about his sexual inadequacies and white privilege. He gradually became one of music's most unlikely new stars when he collaborated with Snoop Dogg and released the platinum-selling single "Freaky Friday" with Chris Brown. Born on March 15, 1988, in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, David Burd was a class clown who began rapping for his friends and claims to have supported the R&B group 112 at 14 years old when they performed at a youth overnight camp he was attending. After graduating from the University of Richmond, he worked for an advertising agency in California and began giving his monthly progress presentations in rap forms, before deciding to pursue his dreams of comedy stardom through hip-hop. Recording his first mixtape So Hard in 2013 and releasing a new track on his channel every week, his "Jewish Flow" video, in which he rap battles Hitler, grabbed heaps of attention and his profile continued to spike when "Ex-Boyfriend" notched up a million views in 24 hours. After his savings ran out, he used a crowdfunding campaign to pay for new material and a tour, and his debut album Professional Rapper in 2015 featured Snoop Dogg, Hannibal Buress, T-Pain, and Fetty Wap, going on to reach number 7 on the US charts. He was controversially named on XXL Magazine's prestigious Freshman Line-up and his single "Molly" with Panic! At The Disco's Brendon Urie was another breakthrough success, before he created an alter-ego named Brain on the EP I'm Brain and scored his first Top 10 hit single with "Freaky Friday" in 2017, on which he rapped about swapping bodies with R&B superstar Chris Brown. His live shows also featured stand-up comedy skits before returning in 2019 with charity single "Earth," which championed environmental causes and featured thirty different stars pretending to be animals, including Justin Bieber as a baboon, Ariana Grande as a zebra, and Miley Cyrus as an elephant. The TV series Dave, a fictionalized version of Lil Dicky's career co-written with Jeff Schaffer, premiered on FXX on March 2020. An album titled Penith (The Dave Soundtrack) saw the light in 2024, compiling the music from the show's three seasons.