Godfrey honed his stand-up skills at the
All Jokes Aside comedy club in Chicago in the early 1990s. In 1995, Godfrey made his New York debut at
Carolines on Broadway and the
Comic Strip Live and was soon signed by the William Morris Talent Agency. He began working regularly in television, first behind the cameras as a warm-up comedian for
Cosby and
Soul Man. His first on-camera appearance featured him performing stand-up comedy for NBC's
Friday Night Videos, followed by more small television and film roles. In 2000, Godfrey appeared in the
Aspen Comedy Festival and on
Comedy Central's
Premium Blend. He also played a comical role in the movie
Soul Plane, acting as an African pilot. He has also been in numerous episodes of BET's
Comic View. A self-styled karate master, he continues to do film and television work alongside his stand-up career in New York. His first one-hour special, "Godfrey: Black by Accident" was shot for Comedy Central on January 22, 2011, at the Gramercy Theatre in New York City to a standing room only audience. As a guest of Mike Ward's show called "F*ck les variétés", part of the
Just for Laughs 2012 festival of Montreal, his performance was highly acclaimed. In the following year, he had his own solo show called "The Godfrey Complex" in the same festival for a whole week. His second one-hour special, "Godfrey: Regular Black" was filmed for Showtime in Chicago, his home town, on August 12, 2016. ==Filmography and discography==