Jesse Camp

Jesse Camp shot to instant prominence in 1998 after claiming victory in MTV’s inaugural “Wanna Be a VJ” contest, turning his sudden appeal among the network’s audience into a recording contract. He entered the world on November 4, 1979, in Granby, Connecticut. Once he finished high school he headed for Manhattan, where he took up the drums in the East Village outfit Easy Action. Barely five months after settling in New York he outdistanced four thousand rivals in the channel’s national talent hunt for a fresh on-air host and rocketed into the spotlight overnight. The skeletal, theatrical figure—wild electric-shock hair, a voice that evoked Elmer Fudd on dope—attracted equal measures of scorn and admiration; although he claimed to have been homeless before securing the VJ role, critics cited his suburban roots as evidence of a privileged past, and his contest win drew further skepticism when the Village Voice revealed that a single viewer had cast roughly three thousand ballots in his favor. Popularity nonetheless reached such heights that Hollywood Records offered him the largest deal ever extended to an unsigned newcomer; recruiting the 8th Street Kidz, whose ranks included alumni of Vixen, LSD and Dogs D’Amour, he released his first album, Jesse & the 8th Street Kidz, in May 1999.