Lil Dicky Katz: The Evolution of Jewish-American Comedic Music

• In Event: Borscht Airs: Situating Mickey Katz in American Jewish Musical Comedy

Abstract

In the 2015 song “Professional Rapper,” rapper Lil Dicky sits down for an imagined job interview with Snoop Dogg to make the case for his presence in the hip-hop world. Responding to Snoop Dogg’s interrogation in rhyme, Lil Dicky, the stage persona of David Burd, explains, “I wanna do the whole thing different” with “stand-up rap” that reflects a new “way of looking at things than your typical applicant.” To set his approach apart in his pitch, Burd makes two things clear: he is the product of a suburban Jewish background and he wants to make funny music that reflects his identity – demonstrated in songs such as “$ave Dat Money,” “Ex-Boyfriend,” and “White Dude.” Critics such as Sam Rosen challenge the ways Burd negotiates with his whiteness, but few convincingly grasp his satirical approach and even fewer consider the fascinating ways that he portrays his Jewishness through music and comedy. While Burd’s unique voice may be considered in relation to Jewish rappers such as the Beastie Boys and Hoodie Allen, I argue that Lil Dicky is best understood in the tradition of Jewish comedic musicians including Mickey Katz, Allan Sherman, and Adam Sandler.

Drawing upon recordings and interviews with Lil Dicky and Hoodie Allen, this paper investigates how Jewish performers have employed comedy within music to communicate Jewish American identity relative to the American mainstream. In dialogue with recent scholarship on the role of Yiddish and other Jewish signifiers in the music of Mickey Katz and Allan Sherman (see Jeremy Dauber, Josh Kun, Ari Y. Kelman, and Jeffrey Shandler), I compare Burd’s output in the twenty-first century with Mickey Katz’s in the 1950s. I seek to understand how musical and comedic signifiers of Jewishness evolve across generations, considering in particular the changing role of Yiddish throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century.

Author

• Ezekiel Levine, New York University