Loving the Earth is the theme of a new music video by comic rapper Lil Dicky, who enlisted the voices of two dozen famous singers to play the roles of animals in the video.
Just released Thursday, the video is one of the hottest-trending items on YouTube, where it reached 25 million views just before I posted this. With its catchy tune, the song is being promoted as a new anthem for Earth Day. Happy Earth Day!, by the way.
It feels almost redundant to share this video, considering all the anticipation and attention surrounding it, but it is a far more fun and amusing than the dull and somewhat ironic Earth Day message posted by Andrew Wheeler, the current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
It was clever of Dave Burd, Lil Dicky’s real name, to put the voices of some famous singers into the bodies of animals, including Justin Bieber as a baboon, Ariana Grande as a zebra, Halsey as a lion cub, Zac Brown as a cow, Adam Levine as a vulture, Shawn Mendes as a rhino, Charlie Puth as a giraffe, Miley Cyrus as an elephant, Katy Perry as a pony, Ed Sheeran as a koala, Leonardo DiCaprio as himself, and several others.
Proceeds from the video will go to help out the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, which strives to educate the public about the environment and climate change while working on environmental projects.
“Dicky frolics with penguins, analyzes chatty microbes under a microscope, and talks to a marijuana plant voiced by Snoop Dogg (duh),” writes Zoya Teirstein for Grist magazine. “The video might look like a Disney channel special, but isn’t too concerned with being wholesome (Justin Bieber’s line: ‘I’m a baboon. I’m like a man just less advanced and my anus is huge).’
“If you don’t want to watch an animated Lil Dicky sing about the planet in a loincloth g-string for seven minutes, I don’t blame you,” she continues. “But think of it this way: what if this whole video is a critique of the tired and worn-out tropes used by old-school Earth Day advocates? Hmm??”
Ellen DeGeneres was able to preview the video on her show last week, but she didn’t seem to have much time or know what to ask Lil Dicky — or Dave Burd, who turned 31 last month.
Burd, who grew up in a middle-class, Jewish family, launched his career by emphasizing feelings of self-consciousness in his characters. Lil Dicky’s first rap video in 2013 was “Ex Boyfriend,” which contains sexually explicit lyrics about feelings of inadequacy around a hot girlfriend. Ellen said she liked “Freaky Friday,” in which Lil Dicky suddenly finds himself in the body of Chris Brown with all of the implications that brings.
Dave Burd clearly has a knack for rap, and that may be where he continues to grow his comedic fame and fortune, but there is another side to this man who graduated from the University of Richmond in Virginia, and began working in account management for the advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (Bio, Wikipedia).
In a 2014 interview with Michael Trampe of HipHop magazine, Burd said: “I started rapping simply to get attention comedically, so I could write movies, write TV shows and act. I had very little interest in being a rapper. I fell in love with rapping though, so I’m not leaving that game until I’ve proved my point. However, I plan on having two concurrent careers going on at the same time, as a rapper, and as a comedian/actor/writer. I value the non-musical career just as much as the rap career, and can’t wait to begin acting on that.”
