The Business of Being Druski

From viral skits to sold-out stages, this creative is proving that betting on yourself pays off

- By Kimberly Wilson Photography by Grier Styling by Anatolli Smith

Druski, photographed in New York, embodies a new kind of comedy mogul: unpolished, unbothered and fully in control.

When I hear sbout someone’s backstory, I can usually pinpoint what the twist in their origin story might be—the moment in time when someone who may have started out good takes a turn toward darkness.

It could be an incident or even an internal reflection that puts the person on a journey toward mayhem and, in some cases, destruction. In movies, we saw this with Killmonger in Black Panther and with Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. Is real life ever that dramatic? Perhaps not, but one can still see clear representations of how such situations can play out. Then there are those who confront similarly harsh experiences, yet manage to stay on the path of light—and even draw lessons from their hardships to make future audiences laugh.

For comedian and Internet personality Drew Desbordes, aka Druski, I imagine his turn toward darkness could have begun with his high school teacher’s words. Sitting in class next to a star athlete destined for Division I football, the future comedy mogul listened as his teacher publicly humiliated him in front of his peers. “Don’t sit next to Drew,” she announced. “He’s not going to the same places you're going in life. You need to be sitting over here.”

For many young Black men, those words could have been a verdict. They could have delivered a self-esteem hit that caused irreparable damage to an impressionable teen. Druski was still figuring how to get around Atlanta, let alone how to make his way through the world (one could write a whole separate piece on how educators can better support creatives pursuing nontraditional careers, but that’s a story for another day).