For Che Durena, it's taken years of hard work to tell jokes this dirty

In the 2020s, Canada has generated a new crop of comedic talent, who are using social media to get around the industry's traditional gatekeeper. Black Canadian comedians are taking the internet by storm, turning people's screens into their stage and redefining what Canadian comedy looks and sounds like. This is New Comedy Noir.

Back in 2020, when the pandemic shut down live comedy, a lot of comedians adapted by chopping up their old standup sets and bits of crowd work footage and putting it up on TikTok. For Che Durena, that wasn't really an option.

"I hadn't been filming a lot of sets prior to [the pandemic]," he says. "I didn't have the standup content to put out there. My strengths are joke writing and riffing and commentary. That's what I can already do very well, so I made that the strength of every video."

That strategy seems to have worked out. The 31-year-old Haitian-Canadian comic — originally from Port Coquitlam, B.C. — has amassed 7.7 million followers on TikTok since the beginning of the pandemic by riffing and commentating on the platform's lewdest, crudest, and weirdest videos. While his online breakout may seem sudden, Durena has actually been in the comedy game for over a decade. 

"I think the biggest thing we're doing with the platform now is teaching my audience that I've been doing standup for a long time," he says. "I'm a standup first."

Durena discovered standup after watching his older brother perform in his hometown, then he began pouring hours into it. In 2011, he moved to Mexico, working as a scuba diving instructor by day and refining his act by performing for tourists at night. 

In 2014, in an attempt to further flesh out his talent, he moved to Toronto, using The Corner Comedy Club as one of his main proving grounds. Although Durena's elaborately crude lines may seem to be from the hip, these musings have actually been refined over years.

"I've always said the fundamentals of comedy are shit, piss, cum," says Durena. "Look at something like South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are maybe the two greatest comedic minds of the past 50 years, and you look at the base of a lot of South Park jokes and it's just shitting and pissing."

Staying true to himself is the path to Durena's comedic greatness, even if some people find his material too crude or weird. He cites video game creator Hidetaka Miyazaki as a surprise inspiration. Miyazaki's games — like Dark Souls — were initially misunderstood by audiences, but are now seen as gaming classics paving the way for his universally acclaimed opus Elden Ring. 

"These things that were hated at a certain point and then are completely revered, and people can't get enough of it because it just stays so true to what it is," he says. "It can't be replicated by other people because what they make is so pure. [Miyazaki] never shifted. He's like, 'No, this is the vision, purified, purified and purified until it's so good.'"

After pandemic restrictions loosened in 2022, and with his popularity on the rise, he relocated again — this time to New York — to sharpen his craft in front of NYC's notoriously tough audiences, before going out on his North American headlining tour, "The Raw Dog Tour." He just finished the Canadian leg of the tour, playing Just For Laughs Vancouver, where he was able to re-introduce himself to hometown crowds. 

"A lot of people who I grew up with came out and so it was very special for me to put on such a big show for friends and family," Durena says.

Since blowing up online, Durena has arguably become Canada's biggest Black comic, in addition to being one of its biggest comics, period. It's a stature that he recognizes — and humbly downplays — but his racial identity is rarely played for laughs. 

"Just being a Black guy on stage, saying 'nigga' as your punchline, white people love that," he says. "They eat that shit up. It gets you a laugh almost every single time. I didn't want to use that as a crutch. But if I was going to, I would use it in a joke that would bang really hard."

Despite his explosion in popularity, Durena still sees himself as a fledgling comic, and is bashful about discussing any sort of "legacy" as a comedian, Black or otherwise. For most comedians, it takes decades for them to pop and then another before they're lucky enough to generate an opus. This burst of social media fame is simply another step along the path for one of Canada's biggest Black comedians, and a great opportunity to reintroduce himself to audiences.

"I would hope that if that was something that was deterring someone who is Canadian and is Black and wants to get into comedy and they're like, 'Oh, well, there's no opportunity,' or 'It can't happen' and [then] they see me, that they go 'it's doable,'" he says.