From Viral Skits to Music Videos: Druski Is Hip-Hop's New Favorite Comedian
The pandemic has been good to Druski. Nearly every other day on Black Twitter, for the last six months, one of the comedian’s new sketches—typically one-minute long, primed for social media consumption—soars to virality, flooding the platform with “Tears of Joy” emojis, expressions of high praise like “he’s sooo stupid lmaoooo,” and “he a damn fool.” Druski has converted that heat into cameos in high-profile music videos like Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later,” Lil Yachty’s “Oprah’s Bank Account,” and most recently, Jack Harlow’s “Tyler Herro.” Unofficially, Druski has become hip-hop's comedian of the moment — think Mike Epps or Katt Williams, with a livestream. Pro athletes from Jalen Ramsey and Floyd Mayweather to Odell Beckham Jr., who invited Druski to live with him for a while this spring, are also fans.
All of this began three years ago, in October of 2017, when Druski published his first sketch on Instagram. It’s a spur of the moment low stakes video, filmed at the urging of friends, but the blueprint for today’s success is clear. He’s posted up at an Exxon in Lawrenceville, Georgia, thumbing through a handful of one dollar bills, bragging: “Niggas counted me out, I ain’t never been out the game too long, big bro, you feel me?” His mannerisms, vocal inflections and slang are spot on imitations of a Southern rapper/hustler/scammer flaunting on social media.
This is Druski’s secret: He has a deft knack for building nuanced, fully-realized characters with extreme brevity and sniper-like precision. You see this in his team mom sketch, where he waves with just his index finger, chews gum with his mouth completely open, whispers in the coach’s ear and wanders around like he’s ordained by God to be a fabulous assistant coach. It’s also demonstrated in his most famous recurring character, Kyle Rogger, a rambunctious and obnoxious frat bro with every Southern good ol boy mannerism, including calling everyone by first and last name and random snaps of the wrist, a gesture that signals packing an invisible can of dip.
Born Drew Desbordes, Druski grew up in Gwinnett County in Georgia, a suburban area north of Atlanta that’s also home to Migos. He credits his diverse upbringing for allowing him to act as a shapeshifting chameleon, jumping from one character to the next. Quavo of the Migos, a Druski fan, has a similar appraisal of the value of growing up in North Atlanta: "Nawfside [Atlanta] boys are built with a different hunger,” he explains. “Being surrounded by so many different cultures helped us learn different accents early which allowed us to be adaptable and fit in in different cities around the world. I'm proud we could open doors for the Nawf to be heard and I'm most definitely proud of Druski and everything he's accomplishing."
Just like most boys in the south, Druski played sports as a kid and generally stayed out of real trouble, but inside the classroom, it was a habit. “Some kids would be like, yo I wanna be best dressed or I wanna be the best athlete. I used to literally say in my mind in elementary school, ‘I wanna be the funniest this year, I wanna be the funniest kid in the class,’” he says. “I would just fuck off all class and act an ass.”
Druski’s parents are academically minded—his father, a pilot, attended Howard University and later graduated from the United States Air Force Academy and is a Wall of Honor nominee at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, while his mother has a Master of Science in Public Health and once worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—so naturally, this didn’t go over well at home. “Upset’s not even the [right] word,” he recalls. “My mom used to lose it— like literally cry.”
Druski’s slacking off nearly made him a super senior. He graduated on time after his Spanish teacher, Nancy Gordeuk, handed him a two-sided sheet of paper with basic vocabulary like “hola” and “como estas.” Druski filled out the paper and was awarded credit for two years of Spanish. A year later, Gordeuk went viral for a rant she made during a graduation ceremony; she subsequently blamed the rant on Satan. Druski shrugs it off, unphased. “Sheeiiiit, it helped me get out of high school, so…”
After high school, Druski spent a few years at Georgia Gwinnett College before transferring to Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, a small, sleepy town which he picked because he heard the parties were crazy. They weren’t: “I literally sat in my room so many days. Couldn’t even pay my rent; my mom was paying my rent. And I was in the middle of nowhere, four hours away [from home].” He got depressed, stopped showing up to class, and would watch videos of comedians on Youtube—not just the funny ones, but inspirational speeches by Steve Harvey as well. Two semesters in, Druski dropped out of college. This left his mother disappointed, but his grandmother threatened to cut him off completely. “I was like ‘what the fuck?’ I was hurt by that. I was like watch, I’ma show y’all. I’ma prove it to y’all.”
As far as show and prove moments go, a prominent cameo in a music video for the biggest pop star in the world definitely does the trick. Druski ended up in the “Laugh Now Cry Later” video via direct invite from Drake, who became a fan after watching Druski’s Kyle Rogger bit, hit his line and asked him if he'd like to hang out at Nike’s Beaverton Oregon campus for the shoot. His scene was improvised and developed on the spot. He spent most of the time there in typical Druski fashion: “fucking around with all the workers and like walking around talking to people like I was the CEO.”
As his star rises, Druski has cultivated other rarefied friendships. Druski developed such a genuine friendship with Beckham Jr. that the Cleveland Browns wide receiver asked Druski, at the beginning of the pandemic, if he’d like to spend the offseason living with him in Los Angeles. When I ask Druski, who accepted the offer, if letting new chums live in your home for months is just some sort of rich people thing, he says “Hell nah. He don’t do that with everybody.” Beckham Jr. says they became close because “Druski brings the best energy wherever he goes and always has everyone in the room laughing.”
Living with Odell entails a lot of exercising, fancy alkaline water, and criticism of terrible dietary habits. “We were working out everyday,” Druski says. “He just dropped so much knowledge about health.” Then there was that time when David Blaine chased Druski through the house, pleading with him to seal his lips shut with a needle and thread. Druski and Beckham Jr. looked on in disbelief as Blaine performed disgusting feats like eating glass and throwing up a frog: “That guy’s scary man. I’ve seen magicians, but I don’t think he’s human,” he said.
Not surprisingly, Druski has ambitions to expand beyond social media. He’s filmed three episodes of an independent YouTube show called The Guys, which he describes as Jackass meets The Office. He and friends Chauncey, Solo, Devante and Jojo run around, pull stunts and get themselves into awkward situations. In one episode, they get drunk, play golf (badly), smash a bottle of liquor on the road and get the police called on them. In another they visit some guy’s farm and watch him pour a can of beer down a goat’s throat. “I just wanted to show my lifestyle and I wanted to make a name for my friends while doing that,” he says of the show.
Druski is tight-lipped on specifics, but he’s also in talks to produce and star in traditional Hollywood fare, which is the ultimate goal. “I really wanna leave my own mark on this world when I leave it,” he says. “I want my Talladega Nights or Bad Boys.” He’s toying around with the idea of turning one of his Instagram live sketches — like the abrasive CEO of “Coulda Been Records,” a punishing combination of Simon Cowell and Puff Daddy who evaluates the talents of his fans — into a real label. Druski dabbles in music himself. “I make music just ‘cause I enjoy it. It’s nothing I take super serious, like I wanna do music. It’s just a hobby for me,' he says. “But, I mean yo, it’s no boundaries man. I can do anything. Tomorrow I might say I’m a horseback rider. I live with no boundaries. I don’t like being boxed in.”
Originally Appeared on GQ
