Dave Burd may be ready to fully focus on rap again as Lil Dicky, but he views the next major phase of his career as an actor and filmmaker.
At 35 years old, Dave Burd, better known by his stage name Lil Dicky, already has a platinum album and several viral hits as a rapper and a critically acclaimed TV show, Dave, based on his own life that at one point became the most watched comedy in FX history.
After three seasons, however, FX announced that there are no current plans for a fourth, with Burd deciding to take an extended break to focus on music and other ventures. While promoting Mountain Dew’s Baja Blast flavor last week in Las Vegas with his own custom Audacy radio show for Super Bowl weekend, Burd told Boardroom that he’s excited to dive into new music and the next phase of a multifaceted career with immense multi-hyphenate potential.
“I want to treat it like I’m like an up-and-coming rapper who’s proved nothing,” Burd, whose Dave soundtrack album, Penith, dropped last month, told Boardroom. “It’s going to be a whole new challenge. I’m going to really try to find my digital footprint this year in a way that I’ve been neglecting for the past five years because I’ve been so busy making television.”
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To say the rap and music industry has changed since his last album — the platinum 2015 debut Professional Rapper — would be a massive understatement. The Philadelphia native explained how, back then, YouTube was king of the world, and getting views on the social medium was the name of the game. Lil Dicky’s 2018 smash hit “Freaky Friday” with Chris Brown has 747 million YouTube views.
Now, TikTok has eclipsed YouTube in industry importance, and artists are being discovered in new ways.
A fan of Mark Cuban and Shark Tank, Burd said he likes innovations that democratize industries, and the TikTokification of music allows more artists to be discovered and blow up. After all, YouTube gave Lil Dicky the opportunity to become a rapper when he probably wouldn’t have broken through 30 years ago.
However, a part of Burd believes things may be too democratized right now, with people now only making music for the perfect 10-second moment rather than for an actual song.
“Things are getting diluted, if I’m being quite honest,” Burd continued. “There’s too many artists, too much clutter, too much stuff that’s probably not great that comes out as a result. But ultimately, humanity might be at its best when everyone feels like they have a shot to do what they want in life. And that’s kind of what’s happening. So I’m for it.”
Despite what he thinks is an overabundance of clutter in music right now, Burd said the cream still rises to the top. Great talents won’t usually go undiscovered, so all he can do is make the best product he can and be confident that success will follow.
That said, Burd admitted that creating Dave, which debuted in 2020, took away from his music and being as focused on the digital world.
“I started my whole career as Mr. Internet, you know what I mean?” he said. “Everything I did was designed to be big on the internet to then give me opportunity. And I got the opportunity with the show, and I really haven’t been that active in the internet space as a result.”
Dave took away from Burd’s ability to build musical momentum over the last several years. Believing he’s just scratching the surface of what he can do as a rapper, Burd is ready to put his all into the artist known as Lil Dicky. He wants to leave no stone unturned and go for it in his music career before it’s too late.
In his development as an artist and television creator, leaving no stone unturned means meticulous attention to detail Burd displayed in his eponymous Dave character. If he drafted a script for an episode, he was going to chip away at it and improve it until it was ready to be shot. Lil Dicky would record a song and notice two bars that could use some tweaking to create a more optimal final product.
“In everything I put out, I want it to be at a certain threshold of greatness,” Burd said.
Dave provided Burd a three-year crash course in making TV and film, a pretty damn impressive first fully-fledged foray into the space. Now, he sees himself as a writer and filmmaker more than he ever thought he would when he was 12, hoping to be a comedian when he grew up.
While Burd is going to mainly focus on Lil Dicky right now, he also said he’s writing a movie right now he hopes will be his debut as a feature filmmaker. He’s in awe of and inspired by directors like Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, and the Coen brothers, the latter of whom were able to make stylistically varied and excellent features like The Big Lebowski and No Country For Old Men. Burd said he’s inspired by the diversity of stories those auteurs are able to create.
The final episode of Dave‘s third season stars Brad Pitt as himself in a stalker hostage situation that’s so surreally absurd in one of the many ways the show stood out during its run. It confirmed to Burd that he could not only make music at the highest level, but do the same in making television and movies.
“There’s nothing more validating as an aspiring up-and-coming filmmaker to get the biggest movie star of our lifetime to come on set and take it so seriously,” Burd said. “Pitt worked with all the people I just named. And I’m literally on set giving him direction and notes, and he looked at me and treated me with the same level of respect.”
While Dave Burd’s present is firmly focused on a rapping renaissance for Lil Dicky, the phase in his life after that will be in making movies.
“When I’m dead and you look back on my career,” Burd said, “a large part of the second half of my career is going to be as a filmmaker and writing, directing, and starring in movies.”
Lil Dicky proved he can be a platinum-selling artist who can return to rap’s pinnacle. Dave proved he could create content popular with both critics and fans.
The potential is there for Dave Burd to be a generational creator of content across multiple genres; all he has to do is seize the opportunity.
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