Before Drew Desbordes appeared in a music video with Drake or lived with the N.F.L. star Odell Beckham Jr., his teary-eyed mother scolded him near the living room couch he had flipped upside down as a stage prop.
At that moment, he was not the comedian known by millions as Druski. He was a floundering college dropout with improbable hopes of social media stardom, recording goofy, aimless skits at his family’s home.
Along with the upturned furniture, Druski’s clothes were scattered in boxes at the home. His mother berated him for leaving school with a poorly defined plan.
“It was horrible,” Druski said. “It was a bad situation, and she had enough.”
In an era of seemingly infinite internet personalities, becoming a known commodity requires determination, strategy and more than a little luck. Druski said his mother’s criticism motivated him to further pursue mainstream success. He wrote down his goals, one of them being to refine his comedic voice.
Druski ultimately broke through with anthropological humor videos tinged with vulgarity. His popular characters, including an entitled fraternity brother, an agitated airport security agent and an adulterous warehouse worker, helped him amass millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok.
As people scrolling on their phones began noticing, so did celebrities. Professional athletes recite his sketches. Snoop Dogg made a song with him. Google and Nike hired him to anchor advertisements.
“The new realm of entertainment all lies in social media, and he’s just authentic and knows how to tap into today’s culture in a funny way,” said the influencer Jake Paul.
Druski, 29, is now angling to be considered something more than the hilarious sidekick to the rich and famous. And as he manages his newfound fame and chases higher ambitions, like a feature role in a theatrical movie, he wants to remain connected with his followers through crude skits taped on a phone.
“It’s about transitioning and being able to do the bigger things, but fans still want to see the grit — that funny, raw material,” Druski said. “That’s what fuels the dream.”
Druski headlined a comedy tour last year and has opened for the rappers J. Cole and Lil Baby. This year, he created and hosted “Coulda Been House” a YouTube reality-competition show produced by his 4Lifers Entertainment company. He is finalizing an announcement for a music and comedy festival, Coulda Fest, to be held in Atlanta this year.
The projects, Druski said, are an attempt to diversify his career.
“Nobody in the industry ever fell off, they just never grew past their past successes,” Druski said in his office, wearing a black collared shirt, camouflage hat and sandals. Earlier a friend joked that he was dressed like a fisherman. “People get bored with seeing the same stuff.”
But as Druski expands his presence, he said he is cognizant of potential missteps. Because of his business relationships, his work will be more heavily scrutinized.
“It definitely makes you think twice,” he said.
The comedy world is navigating the acceptable thresholds for sensitive or polarizing material. In 2022, Druski deleted from social media a skit in which his character pressured women to drink alcohol, implying they would have sex without sober consent.
“Sometimes you walk that line of being edgy with jokes,” Druski said. He added: “You don’t want to change into this person who’s always in this shell. They still love you for who you are, so be yourself.”
Druski, the middle child of a Catholic family, was raised in Gwinnett County, Ga., where he took piano lessons and karate classes. His mother punished his profanity — now a staple in his videos — by lathering his mouth with soap.
“I can’t co-sign on the language and the behavior,” his mother, Cheryl Desbordes, a public health practitioner, said of her son’s skits. “I personally wouldn’t do it, but that’s his life. I just have to know, at the end of the day, that he’s good inside.”
She continued: “Drew is fully prepared for success. Whatever happens, he knows the difference between right and wrong.”
Druski studied broadcast journalism at Georgia Southern University but soon dropped out, taking unfulfilling jobs at a restaurant and warehouse. At home, he created unfocused and sloppily executed video clips.
Things began to change after his mother’s admonishment; he adjusted his approach and paid attention to social media trends. Some of his videos got noticed, including one from 2018 in which he parodied an angry high school football coach’s halftime locker room speech.
“His most valuable skill is being able to take real-life situations that everybody goes through and just putting his twist on it,” said Chukuma Hedd-Williams, Druski’s road manager and longtime friend.
One day, Druski randomly messaged the rapper Jack Harlow on social media and said he was a fan. Harlow reciprocated the praise. Not long after the two met in Harlow’s unfurnished Atlanta apartment, they were traveling on a bus during the rapper’s 2019 tour. Druski spent that Thanksgiving with Harlow’s family, using the experience as comedic fodder.
“I look back on it as one of the best periods of my life,” Harlow, a six-time Grammy nominee, said in an email. “We share a language and understanding, and I miss my dawg every day we aren’t together.”
The growth of Druski’s fan base accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Drawing inspiration from “Making the Band” and “American Idol,” he harshly judged followers’ singing skills during Instagram livestream sessions in a series called “Coulda Been Records.” The internet-savvy Drake noticed Druski’s videos and invited the comedian to appear in his “Laugh Now, Cry Later” music video with Beckham and the N.B.A. star Kevin Durant.
A tattoo of the song’s title now scrolls across Druski’s right calf.
“I was like, ‘Hey, I’m about to go achieve everything I can achieve,’” Druski said.
As pandemic restrictions eased, Druski became a mainstay at events like the Super Bowl and the N.B.A. All-Star Game. He has worked with Bud Light, Beats by Dre and other companies as a pitchman, and his most high-profile commercials may be those for Google Pixel and the N.B.A. In the spots, he appears prominently with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jimmy Butler.
“He’s really good at what he does, and he understood the role and influence that he could play as the centerpiece,” said Daryl Butler, the vice president of devices and services marketing for Google. “He understood our mission.”
The walls inside Druski’s upscale, marble-accented Atlanta home document his ascent, with personalized autographed jerseys from the N.F.L. stars Lamar Jackson and Jalen Ramsey hanging in his basement. But Druski said he felt he had not fully arrived.
He said that major distribution platforms declined to air “Coulda Been House,” an adaptation of his Instagram sessions, and that FX scrapped a planned show with him and Kevin Hart, blaming the Hollywood strikes. Although Druski appeared in “Praise This,” a film released on the streaming service Peacock, as a supporting character, he has yet to land a major theatrical feature role despite two years of auditions.
“That’s part of the hustle,” he said. “The noes are what gets you to the yeses.”
