Druski Reminds the Comedy Community That This Is What ‘Woke’ Actually Means
Contrary to popular belief, white liberal arts students protesting President Trump through interpretive dance isn’t “woke” — that’s just what The Man wants you to think.
The phrase “stay woke” first entered the public lexicon through the recordings of influential folk and blues singer Lead Belly with his 1938 song “The Scottsboro Boys.” Later, in the current century, the genre-spanning Erykah Badu brought the phrase back into pop culture’s consciousness through her own music, and when the Black Lives Matter movement emerged in the mid-2010s, “stay woke” became a popular warning among BLM supporters that reminded them to be vigilant in spotting racial discrimination.
Then, Childish Gambino released his hit single “Redbone” in 2016, and white college students everywhere stole the word “woke,” over-used it in Tumblr rants and Twitter fights, and turned it into a punchline on the left and curse word on the right that now pejoratively describes anything from rainbow-colored Solo Cups to a video game where the main character is a female.
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Today, “woke” is the single most derisive term that half of the comedy community hurls at any joke or comedian who disagrees with them politically. But social media superstar Drew “Druski” Desbordes never slept on what “woke” always meant:
Druski, who grew up in Gwinnett County, Georgia, rose to internet fame in the late 2010s through his sketch comedy and his collaborations with hip-hop musicians such as Jack Harlow and Lil Yachty. Through his work with established music stars, his satirical record label/social media talent show Coulda Been Records and his various sketch characters that populate his many viral videos, Druski has become one of the most widely-exposed comics on the internet.
After Druski served as a featured guest at the most recent NBA All-Star Game, the comic has apparently decided to continue his hot streak by becoming comedy's unofficial champion for reclaiming the word “woke” from both white liberals who use it to describe their gender-non-conforming pottery business on Etsy and white conservatives who hurl “woke” like a slur whenever a Black person has a public-facing job.
Hopefully, the white comedy world takes note of Druski’s proper usage of “woke,” and, one day, this sketch will be the first result when you search “woke comedy” on Twitter rather than a clip of Andrew Schulz threatening to rape Kendrick Lamar.
