Meet Jessy Taylor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessy Taylor.

Hi Jessy, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?

Hi, VoyageLA, thank you so much for having me. Everyone has a story, and I will tell mine. In my life and career, I have never been anyone’s mouthpiece but my own. I have faced more tragedy than most, and I am surprised that I am even alive. I have been kidnapped, falsely arrested and beaten by cops. Additionally, I beat a heavy drug addiction and have been sober for almost three years. I have been nothing but open and honest with my story, and there is nothing I want to hide. All of my success has come from having a natural drive with talent. I never gave up and always worked hard. I have had the acting and music bug my entire life. I have never had any other dreams. I have had many doors slammed in my face and have been rejected countless times, but I never let that stop me. I kept my head held high and remained optimistic, even when things looked completely hopeless. I have invested countless hours into my work. Some call me a content creator, others a musician, and some call me their friend. I was named after the famous Rick Springfield hit “Jessie’s Girl,” and music has played a significant role in my life since birth. I was heavily influenced by the soul and spirit of country music and classic rock ‘n’ roll, and I growing up I loved listening to artists like Joan Jett, Miranda Lambert, Bonjovi, Aerosmith, Billy Idol, Rick Springfield, Blondie, Dolly Parton, and the

Go-go’s. I originally started in theater as a kid and did that for over a decade before trying to pursue my own solo career as a music artist.

In fourth grade, I started using the last name Taylor when emailing acting resumes to try to get signed while having a theater background. At 12 years old, after hard work and rejection from multiple acting agencies, I received a contract. My dad took me out of school and got me my first headshots, I felt like this was just the beginning. Being a minor I had to have both parent’s signatures, even my dad tried talking to the agency however they would not budge. My mother was to get involved and refused to sign the contract, and her exact words to the agent who nicely called the house phone were, “Don’t ever fucking call this house again.” In 8th grade, my mother after having differences with my dad moved me and my two brothers from our multi-million dollar beach mansion to a small three-bedroom apartment in the country, where I didn’t know a single person. All I had was my guitar, songbook, and the TV to watch Glee. I saw so much of the character Rachel Berry in myself, and it helped me get through many hardships in my life. At the new school, which was near the city I attended, I was relentlessly made fun of and called ugly because of my big boobs and how ethnic I looked compared to all the kids that were white as a sheet of paper at school. They had never seen anyone who looked like me, I am half Arab and Italian and I stood out like a sore thumb. I felt so deeply uncomfortable that I started avoiding lunchtime, crying by myself, and instead chose to eat in the bathroom or volunteer with the special needs children. One day, a friend named Angela in math class encouraged me to stand up for myself, and I finally confronted the bullies and cursed them out. I had always been a quiet kid who never talked back, but after that day, I made a promise to myself that I would never let anyone disrespect me again. Little did Angela know that what she told me that day would soon change my life forever. After the experiences I went through, I decided to never let anyone disrespect me again at school. This led to me standing up for myself and confronting other girls who bullied me, the girls who bullied me had so much acne their faces looked like a pepperoni pizza. I refused to let anyone mistreat me again, regardless of who they were. This also included standing up to my own mother, who had previously been a source of bullying and disrespect towards me. In high school, I started working part-time and would fall asleep in the homeroom from working the night before and skipping class. I rode my pink razor scooter to the beach and back, which was a mile each way, every weekend. I never had a spring break. In my junior year, I had another opportunity for an acting contract.

They asked me to cut my hair and send a picture to the acting agency to get a representation contract. After cutting my long, beautiful, and thick hair to my shoulders, my mother laughed at me and refused to sign the representation contract, telling me to screw myself.

After having the college talk with my boyfriend’s mom and seeking out. Guidance counselor, I ended up taking additional online classes in school to get ahead and got an honor roll for the second time. I graduated early, ending with near-perfect grades towards my final classes and went to a community college over in Tallahassee to escape the middle of nowhere and got an apartment with the money I saved during working. I got my first apartment on my 18th birthday and had over 4,000 dollars saved in my bank account. Later I applied to Mississippi State University and got in.

Going to Mississippi helped me as a person, it showed me southern hospitality and it wasn’t as wild as my life in Florida. It was like a breath of fresh air. Right before my first semester ended I was informed by both parents that they would not be getting a loan for my tuition and refusing to pay it. The reasoning was I was a woman. I was left In tears, completely freaking out. I soon then stopped going to classes and started working as a waitress at a nearby restaurant barely making enough to get by. I had an iPhone 4 I had to buy for $30 off eBay since my phone had dropped and broken. One night I went on my computer and found an acting gig as an extra in Chicago, I had nothing to lose on a whim. I packed up and booked a Greyhound bus with the money I had left after I was told I was hired.

When I came back to Mississippi, I prepared to go back to Florida, leaving my studies behind.

At 19 years old, I worked at Steak and Shake after failing to afford tuition at Mississippi State University. I was unable to get a loan as I needed parents to cosign, which was not possible. At this time, I was very depressed, but I was making around $700 a week at Steak and Shake as a server which was amazing and it was walking distance from my grandma’s apartment. My grandma’s apartment was not the best, my car I was driving had bullet holes and my grandmother helped put together gas money with me when I couldn’t afford it with coins.

In December of 2016, I created a YouTube account and started posting daily vlogs. Most of which being at my grandma’s house and some being out with my Arab friends. It took me two years before getting any kind of recognition from other creators or a significant number of views.

Later, I then found myself wanting to book studio time to make music and taking an uber with the last $20 in my bank account and telling the engineer I would pay him back later. After eight months of living in Georgia. My mother called me crying, saying I needed to be there for her as she was upset my uncle died and told me to give up my lease and leave Georgia and she said she missed me so much. I was very young, dumb and naive and was hoping I could comfort my mother when she was upset, hoping she would one day love me. I ditched my apartment after eight months and came back to Florida. I showed up at my mother’s house. I tried calling my mom, but I was blocked. I honked my horn and then my mother was home and came out of the house, she said “Jessica, what are you doing here?” I told her “Mom I’m here to see you”. She then said to me “You know you can’t come here right, why would you come all the way back here”. She then turned around and walked back into the house with silence, while I left my great apartment in Georgia that ended up putting me in $3000 of debt.

My mom set me up. She knew I had an apartment, a job, and stability. I was foolish enough to wear my heart on my sleeve and to even believe a word she said.

My fault.

I went back to living in my car again for a month and headed to Mississippi, this time where I found a job being a dancer, while in the locker room, there was talk about Houston and how good the dancing money was there. I overheard and packed my bags and left for Houston. I stayed for two years working 19 hours a day. I stayed in Houston when I was 19 and 20. The clubs in Houston work as they open at 12pm and close around 7 am.

In mid-2018, everything was going smoothly until I received a call from my high school friend Brendan (Bdave), inviting me to visit him for the weekend in LA. I had been there a few times before and told him it wasn’t for me. However, after experiencing burnout from my demanding job, where I worked 19 hours a day with no days off, I decided to take the chance and fly out to LA. I ended up finding an apartment with roommates and eventually moved from Houston to LA.

At that time, social media wasn’t widely accepted, and there weren’t many opportunities to collaborate with other creators because there were so few of them.

Late one October night, everything would change when I would try to attend a Halloween party in the Hollywood Hills. It had only been a few months since I had moved to Los Angeles, and little did I know an unexpected meeting with Sam Pepper would soon shift my life permanently. At this point of time in my life, I was still working as a dancer in the valley and didn’t give attending any Halloween parties a second thought. I was only worried about working hard and earning money.

Randomly before leaving for work, I had found out about a high-profile Halloween party that would be taking place in the Hollywood Hills at the last minute. The online flier for the party informed everyone to meet at the Walgreens parking lot in Hollywood to take a bus to the party. After

non-stop working for months, I then decided to have some fun and try to go to the party on a whim. I quickly realized that I did not have a Halloween costume ready whatsoever, so I dressed up in my stripper outfit. Not only would I think it would be hilarious but it was also my job. Once I arrived, nobody else around me had shared my sense of humor.

Many other creators gave me a very disgusted look and a cruel attitude. Some even ran away from me before I could even say hi. As I approached the party bus in the Walgreens parking lot in Hollywood that would leave in the next few minutes for the hills party, I was stopped by an older lady who scolded me for my outfit and said I was not allowed to come to the party under any circumstances. As upset as I was, I then thought to myself that I genuinely found my costume funny and I never did expect to face such harsh judgment for such a harmless costume. It reminded me of the famous quote from the movie “Mean Girls” that said, “In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.”

As I turned around, I saw Sam Pepper. Sam Pepper saw something in me that others didn’t. While almost everyone else who walked past me stuck up their nose, he didn’t. Sam noticed something special in me that night that many others overlooked. Sam and I exchanged phone numbers. He asked if I was free the next day and if I would like to stream, I told him of course and immediately cleared my schedule.

Shortly after not being allowed and being rejected to be let on the party bus, I went as far as requesting my own uber and even tried to walk up to the party to sneak in and in the driveway was caught outside by the same lady. I was turned away and went back to my apartment in an uber. My night was over. The next day I still met up with Sam and he ended up bringing me onboard a popular YouTube group, where I later became one of the main characters quickly and gained the exposure and fame that I so desperately wanted. Sam Pepper stands to be one of the people who truly changed my life for the better.

When I was freshy 21 years old and first started living in LA, social media wasn’t enough to pay my bills and save money. I had to take the subway and bus to get around, and I was dancing in the valley to make ends meet. One night while I was dancing, me and my friend at the time, who was on drugs, and we were both kidnapped outside the strip club. Two men pulled guns on me and my friend. Instead of freaking out and crying like my friend, I laughed at them and called them losers. They took us from Woodland Hills to the six flags area, while on the way both men pulled into a neighborhood, one escorted me out and threw my cell phone at me which he had taken earlier, and I had a gun to my head sitting on the pavement, while my friend was getting forcefully raped with a gun to her head in the car. I heard screams and cries and that moment will never leave my memory, no matter how hard I try. Thankfully, I ended up jumping out of the car and escaping safely with no serious harm done. Unfortunately, I could not say the same to my friend, I had urged her to jump from the car; however, she did not jump out because she was too scared. This is just one of the many horrific stories in my life.

In 2019, at 21 years old. My life took a dramatic turn when I tearfully talked about how my Instagram account had been disabled in a video I posted on YouTube. That is what led me to international fame. The video was very viral as it highlighted another tragedy in my life. I was mocked by the public, I was later constantly being criticized as entitled and lazy, privileged by YouTube creators who didn’t even know me as a person, so I hid. That year, I was offered to appear on the Dr. Phil show, and I took the opportunity. I read the lines that the producers had given me and followed all their instructions. I knew it was embarrassing, but I believed that wasn’t the real me, and it was like acting where I was given lines. Unfortunately, many people did not see it that way. Luckily, my episode did very well, and it solidified my status and helped me gain the exposure I needed. Recently, through a friend, I found out that my dad’s girlfriend threw a watching party for the episode behind his back while he was not home. She sat with my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, drinking and laughing at me.

In 2020, I hit rock bottom in my life. I had signed a bad management contract and broke up with my boyfriend. I felt completely abandoned by my family and unloved, which led me to turn to drugs like Xanax, Lean, and Percs to cope with my emotions at the age of 22. However, after being found almost dead in an IHOP parking lot while visiting Florida on January 1, 2021, I made the decision to become completely clean and sober and have not looked back since. I lived in Los Angeles on and off from 2018-2022.

Despite the setback, I continued to post content on other social media platforms, including TikTok, where I amassed a large following with my public prank videos. However, some thought my acting was so good that they were not pranks but real interactions. After being the number one creator on TikTok for pranks, I decided to make them private and remove them to separate myself. When people would approach me in public and ask me about the pranks but not know about my music, it created a big disconnect, and it didn’t feel good, although I was very thankful for the support.

Social media has not been easy for me, in fact it has been very dangerous. Me and my family have received many death threats and have had violent attempted break-ins. Thankfully nobody was hurt but there was one close call. I just had a recent death threat last year come to me saying that they would murder me outside my apartment just like they did to John Lennon. At the end of last year, I was diagnosed with an early stage of pre-cancer, which initially made me feel like everything was over. However, I received the right treatment at the beginning of this year, which prevented the cancer from growing, and I’m extremely grateful to be alive today. I was signed to a record label in 2022 and ended up leaving in early 2023 for personal differences and visions.

With over half a million supporters. As an artist and performer, I decided to move to Nashville because I believe it’s a better fit for me in the long run, with numerous opportunities and resources available. I am in the process of writing three books, releasing new country and pop music, doing self-tape auditions, YouTube cover songs, and theater auditions. I’ve defied all odds.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

Definitely very rough and not easy at all. I do believe everything happens for a reason. I worked hard, created a social media fan base and followed my dreams of doing music.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

I work tirelessly as the studio and writing songs all the time. There are random songbook everywhere in my home.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?

Happiness can be subjective, and in the past year, I created content that did not bring me happiness. Despite gaining views and followers, I felt like a sellout, sacrificing my dignity and happiness to put my face out there and pursue my music career. Being number one TikTok for pranks didn’t feel right to me knowing this isn’t what I was truly wanting to do. I eventually realized that this was not the right approach for me. Writing, putting out my own original music and doing cover songs is the path I would like to stay on.

Fast forward to today, I am much happier than I have been in the past. Although the road was very rocky, I stayed true to myself and followed my dreams. I have loyal followers who have seen me grow and support my real passions. It is truly important to pursue what truly makes us happy and brings us fulfillment, even if it is not the easiest or most popular path to take. At the end of the day, we must prioritize our well-being over short-term success.

Contact Info:

• Instagram:@jessytayloroffical
• Other: TikTok: JessyRayTaylor