Lil Dicky Insists He's Not the Hapless Rapper He Plays on 'Dave'

Lil Dicky just went full Lil Dicky.

The rapper and actor unveiled the first season of his semi-autobiographical FXX series Dave with a fitting finale episode that kicked off on an outrageous music video and ended in a self-referential freestyle. "I think the whole psychology of the episode and how it all ends at The Breakfast Club felt right, and like the most Lil Dicky-in-a-nutshell version of the show," says creator, writer, and star Dave Burd (a.k.a. Lil Dicky).

Between debuting the "extremely offensive" track "Jail" (about trying to avoid being raped behind bars) and impressing Charlamagne tha God, Dave (the character) dealt with accusations of cultural appropriation and feelings of being artistically controlled by his new label. "I can't half go for it, I can't compromise my art," he said. "I'm getting, like, very sick of people telling me how to live my life."

Well, after his breakup with Ally (Taylor Misiak) in episode 9, he couldn't go to her for support, and instead got a lousy thumbs-up in response to his "I miss you" text. Ouch.

To break down the first season of Dave, which is on track to be FX's most-watched comedy, EW chatted with Burd about getting feedback from famous fans, deciding to make a song that the real Lil Dicky couldn't, and has more confidence than ever.

Talking about the show, Dicky said "I think it’s kind of like how I am as a person. I wanted to show people how I am. Maybe that was more of a goal of my music, as a rapper, to be more relatable. I talk about lesser, more mundane, slice-of-life things in the show because the context of the show I was comparing to other comedies, not other rappers. I guess it's my approach to hip-hop to an extent. It wasn't really done from a perspective of shaming. ... I mean, Jay-Z and Diddy are the best." adding "It's not autobiographical, but I'd say it's semi-autobiographical. There are elements of things that have happened word-for-word, elements that were kind of inspired by something that kind of happened, and things that are definitely made up. It's a hodgepodge of things. But I would say it's inspired by the story of my life, but there's a lot of really honest truths in it too."

Talking about storylines that are real but surprising "All the stuff about my penis is real. I was born and had surgery on my penis, and it was a big thing with me when I was a kid. Going through adulthood and dealing with that sexual insecurity when you're born and you have a different penis. [Real-life and Dave hype man] GaTa really is bipolar and deals with a lot of that stuff on a daily level and a lot of that story comes from reality."

Talking about other sitcoms that he watched or might have taken inspiration from, he revealed "A little bit. Growing up I was the biggest Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fan. Will Smith really defined what cool was to me, and his career path is a path I aspire to achieve. Curb Your Enthusiasm, obviously a huge impact. I watch a bunch of TV and I say, "I like this from this show and this from this show," but I think it's rare to find a show that checks all the boxes this show does, because I wanted it to be so multi-dimensional. It's not like, "Oh, because Girls is unabashedly being truthful and honest, this show is." It's not an instinct to be like Girls, but I do love Girls. I just saw different things I admired as a consumer and thought about what I wanted to tell and it ended up being a combination of these things rather than me trying to make it like, "I want this to be a combination of Atlanta/Curb/Girls/Entourage." It wasn't like we tried to do that, but what ended up happening was you have a little bit of all this in one."

Talking about the opening, Lil Dicky revealed "I wanted to do something that was really groundbreaking that only I could do in terms of musical mixed with... I wanted to do something this season that was a music video/song driven-esque kind of thing. And I thought: When better to do that than in the season finale? I just wanted it to be epic. I grew up watching season finales, and they meant a lot, and I didn't want it to be me showing up at the door of my girlfriend and being like, "Give me one more chance!" I love the fact that absolutely no one has any idea what they're about to see. At the same time, I think they're gonna watch it and say, 'How could it have been anything other than this?'"

'Did you ever imagine it would end up being the highest-rated sitcom in FXX history? What was your goal?' the rapper was asked.

He replied saying "Yeah, I did. Yes. My goal was to make the biggest show on television. The biggest FX show on television. I knew that it would be good, that to me was a foregone conclusion. The subject matter is too good, I put too much time and energy into it, the people who work on it are too smart, the actors are too funny and good for it not to be bare-minimum good. Especially in the context of television right now. But I think for me to be satisfied, it needed to be incredible. My goal was to make a show where when people talked about it they talked about it like, "Man, this might be the best show on TV right now." And that's what's kind of been happening with this show. Anything short of that would have been a failure. So I'm happy I don't feel that way."

Talking more about the character he revealed "I think in the show, the rapper is telling everyone he's the next Kanye West, because he does believe in himself that he's going to be an iconic rapper."

Continuing about the rapper being anxious he said "But I'm anxious too! Even though I'm saying all that, it's still like every day you wake up stressing about how you're going to possibly execute it. Only this weekend did I hand in the season finale on Saturday. Only now am I actually done and I can revel in the actual... the logic of the fact that I actually accomplished it. Even though I believed I could do it, I knew believing it was 1/50th of the battle. Like I said, I knew it would be good. ... I knew that I had the capability of making it incredible, and that was the ceiling of it and I would have been disappointed if I hadn't reached that ceiling. But did I know that I would reach that ceiling? No, because I'd never done it. That was stressful the entire time. I was like, "What are we even doing?" I had never even acted before, I'd never written [a script], I'd never done any of this sh--, so I'm hoping to God that what we're doing ends up aligning itself with the maximum potential. Thank goodness it did."

Talking about his parents being open to the intimate moments on the show, he said "They love it. With rapping, it was hard for them to latch onto the material and connect with it because they're not big fans of hip-hop. But they are big fans of comedy television, so this is something they can understand and happily talk about with their friends every week. It's easier for them to wrap their heads around. I think they would love the show even it weren't my parents, honestly."

Talking about the response of other rappers, he said "People tell me all the time that they love the show. What makes me the proudest is when I hear it from the top. ... Julia Louis-Dreyfus said, "I can't stop watching this show" -- and she's like the queen of comedy. She reached out to [Dave co-creator] Jeff Schaeffer, who she's friend with from Seinfeld, and said she can't stop laughing, that it's incredible. Moments like that are so satisfying because she's the queen of comedy. All over, rappers have hit me up, comedians, athletes -- it's the kind of show that I think is very pop-culturally relevant. Madonna tweeted about it! People tell me all the time that they love the show. What makes me the proudest is when I hear it from the top. ... Julia Louis-Dreyfus said, "I can't stop watching this show" -- and she's like the queen of comedy. She reached out to [Dave co-creator] Jeff Schaeffer, who she's friend with from Seinfeld, and said she can't stop laughing, that it's incredible. Moments like that are so satisfying because she's the queen of comedy. All over, rappers have hit me up, comedians, athletes -- it's the kind of show that I think is very pop-culturally relevant. Madonna tweeted about it!"

When asked about his upcoming project he said "I haven't put an album out in five years, so I feel like my fans have been waiting for an album and I feel capable of putting one out. I think I'm capable of putting a great one out. I'm about three-quarters of the way through the album, but it's just taking forever because I need it to be great. Now that I'm done working on show as of Saturday. I can't really multi-task like that. I can't work on music while I'm working on the show. There aren't enough hours in the day. Now I can just switch my brain and go back to being a rapper and focus on music. Hopefully I'll have an album out within the next year. Ideally I'd love to have an album out before the year ends. I could finish it next week or in 10 months, but I'm not going to put it out until I feel like it's great. But I'm almost done."