Lil Dicky Was Art Basel's Most Unlikely Headliner

There’s an old stereotype propagated by film and TV, that old white folks just don’t get young people’s music. Mostly it’s because they literally don’t understand the words, whether it’s Bob Dylan or Kurt Cobain or any number of screamers or mumblers. Of course, the one genre that typically receives the most flak in this scenario is rap.

The hippity-hop is simply beyond their realm of comprehension and they talk too darn fast. Lil Dicky may not be winning over any grandparents, but he's making a whole lot of fans thanks to his goofy, tongue-in-cheek take on hip-hop and the rap game, and the surprisingly A-level collaborations he's been able to nail lately (Fetty Wap, Snoop Dogg).

Unfortunately, his exclusive, invite only show for Scope’s 15th anniversary party at Nikki Beach made us all feel like septuagenarians without our hearing aids in.
Held at the nightclub space on the second floor of Nikki Beach, the Scope 15th Anniversary Party featured Lil Dicky and another up and comer, Mack Wilds (perhaps better known for his work as an actor on HBO’s The Wire and the CW’s 90210.) Lil Dicky, also known as Mr. Leftward-Sloping Penis, L-D, and Young Dick, but born simply David Burd, dropped his first studio LP, Professional Rapper, over the summer. The culmination of two years of planning and building both his fanbase and street cred, Professional Rapper is receiving strong reviews and debuted number one on several Billboard charts. 
Friday night, Burd arrived in Miami Beach riding high on that wave of success (and, perhaps, other things). Dressed in (presumably) the same LA Dodgers jersey he wore in one of his most recent — and successful — videos, “$ave Dat Money,” Burd attacked the room with the energy of a toddler given free rein at the ball pit. It didn’t take long for him to leap off the stage and jump on the posh white couches, bouncing up and down to his own rhymes (you could almost hear Dave Chappelle’s Rick James shouting, “Eff yo couch!” in the distance.)

Lil Dicky was great. Probably.

Throughout the set, the speaker system refused to spit out anything discernable. Warbled, broken, and fuzzy, Burd’s vocals were lost in the feedback and that’s a damn shame. This Weird Al of rap deserves to be heard. Burd’s flows are real, his honesty is refreshing, and his Larry David-like jokes about the minutiae of everyday life are gut-busting. But most of that was lost in that terrible noise. 
On the bright side, he was at least entertaining to watch. In such an uppity setting, Burd was the rarest of party crashers: a welcome one. Shirt open, he hopped back and forth, sometimes landing on fans, sometimes not. At one point he gave a lap dance to a woman in a red and white polka dot outfit; whether or not she enjoyed it is debatable, but the rest of us certainly did.

As amused as most of the crowd was by Burd’s antics, there were several moments where people visibly where straining to hear him. Here’s hoping when he returns to Florida next year for the Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival, Lil Dicky truly gets an opportunity to express himself.