Born in Decatur Georgia, raised in Central and East Africa, Cameron spent much of his early childhood bouncing from continent to continent, soaking in a wide influence of music, language and culture. By the time he was eighteen, he had traveled to fifteen different countries, was fluent in three languages and understood first hand the harsh reality of living face to face with the third world. But it was his unveiling passion for music, art and film that would soon take center stage in his life.

At the age of ten his family moved to the rural mountains of North Carolina to begin training as Christian missionaries. Leaving the suburbs of Atlanta behind they moved into a remote cabin in the woods for a year with no electricity, gleaning every skill they could to survive their upcoming jump into the third world. The days were long, the nights were cold, but the Appalachian trails were open, and it was here that Cameron discovered his love for motorcycles. His world was one never-ending dirt road just waiting to be explored.

When he was twelve his family moved to the city of Goma Congo on the banks of Lake Kivu where he was put into an all French speaking school. A transition that forced him to learn the language in just a few short months. When he struggled to communicate he found other way to express himself, and quickly discovered that only one language is universal… music. He started teaching himself to play the piano, writing and recording his first songs and within a year had completed his first tape, designing the covers by hand and selling them at school.

But life would soon take an abrupt and devastating turn. During is first Christmas in Congo chaos broke out. As compensation for lack of pay, the then Zairian government permitted its military to loot the homes of Goma. Cameron and his family were blind to what was coming. Pistol fire turned to AK fire, AK fire to explosions and the town was set a blaze. Huddled in the hallway of their home the family could only lay in wait as the military made its way down their street. With every scream that pierced the darkness, with every shot that shook the night, the thought of accepting death crept a little bit closer.

When the soldiers approached their gate everything went silent. It was as if the whole world had been shaken and suddenly you could hear a pin drop. The voices of the soldiers rattled like whispering thunder just outside their door. Cameron’s father handed him a machete. “If they try and come in, let them take whatever they want. There’s no point dying over possessions. But if they touch your mom or sisters… Cameron I want you to know that you’re going to die. But I want you to kill as many of them as you can before you die to give your mom and sisters a better chance.” No words in his life before or since have rang so loud.

He sat frozen still in a silent stare watching the front door. Waiting. Picturing everything he knew was coming. His father grabbed a picture from off the wall, the words of Psalm 91 within its frame. “You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness… A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand but it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look and see the reward of the wicked. For He shall give His angels charge over you. In their hands they shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

In a moment, as quick as it started, it ended. The soldiers moved on, the sun came up. They were one of only several houses not hit that night. A few days later a lady selling vegetables approached their gate. “Do you know why the soldiers didn’t hit your house that night?” The words froze his mother in her tracks. “They grabbed me and told me to point out who had money, but when they came to your gate they were afraid… they said there were tall men standing around your house and they refused to go in.” Cameron never knew what they saw, but he knew what he prayed and he knew what the Psalm said. From that day on “Faith” was something different.

In the months that followed the family moved across the border to the neighboring country of Rwanda. It was safer, more stable… so it seemed. But in April of 1994, Rwanda would break out into one of the worst genocides in history, leaving over a million dead in its wake. Cruce and his family found themselves on the front lines… a broken road of burning cars and dead bodies the only path between them and safety. With nothing but a Bible in their hands and a prayer in their hearts they pushed through roadblock after roadblock of machete wielding mobs, eventually escaping with their lives under a hail of gunfire.

When he was sixteen his family returned to the United States for a year furlough, but the images of Rwanda were just beginning to leave their mark. He had seen and experienced things no kid around him could understand, and for the first time in his life Cameron felt lost and out of place. The American culture that was once home was now as foreign as any place on earth, and the pictures of death that ate at his mind were a burden no one could share. He tried to connect with the kids in his local church but they were worlds apart. He had seen the hand of God work in ways he could never express, but the American church felt like little more than a withering tradition.

Slowly he found himself pulling away from the world around him. The church and all its stained-glass masquerade began to fade into the background, and public school was the only platform that he had to discover himself. He began to make friends with the few that could somewhat share his world, kids from one of the gangs in his neighborhood. They had experience hurt, experienced death and they welcomed him with open arms. The spiral download was swift. Within a few short months he went from being that young missionary kid with an amazing story to selling guns at school.

Just as his family began to unravel the depths of how far he had fallen, he decided he finally had enough. He packed the few belongings he had, slipped out the back door and disappeared into the night. The streets were cold, and within days he found just how cold they could be. With no money, no food and the police staking out his friends homes, he found shelter with a girlfriend in a beat down apartment in Riverdale Georgia. It was a drug den. He was young, naive, in over his head and everyone around him were strangers. For the first time in his life he was truly alone, and that amazing hand of divine protection he had experienced so many times before was finally gone… and he knew it.

The drugs helped drown out the conviction that was pounding against his heart. He knew he wasn’t right or in the right place, but knew he wasn’t leaving until the ground fell out from under him… and then it did. One night, members of a rival gang on the run for murder sought shelter in the apartment where he was hiding, and in a matter of seconds everything changed. As they beat him within an inch of his life only one picture rang through his mind; the story of Stephen being stoned in the Bible. But every blow he felt wasn’t because he was a light shining into the darkness, but because he was now a part of the darkness, and not even the darkness loves its own.

A few days later he found himself at the end of his rope, hungry, beaten and alone in an abandoned trailer. As he lay there in the darkness he prayed the first prayer he had prayed in a while. “God, if You want me to go home, let them find me tonight. I won’t run, I won’t hide.” With those words he fell asleep. The voices were loud as we he awoke to the flash of red and blue lights spilling through the windows, followed by the sound of beating on the door. He leapt up to climb out the nearest window then remembered his prayer. A calm came over him and he lay back down until the door next to him came crashing in. Of all the memories that would never leave him, one stand out above them all... His father’s face as he looked down through the back window of that police car. He wanted to be lost, but deep inside he was happy he had been found.

He returned to Africa for his senior year of high school and met the first love of his life. They dreamed of one day having a family, a home, but soon found each other worlds apart with several years and an ocean in between. Cameron came back to America with nothing. No family, no help, no clue on how life outside the third world was supposed to work. He tried to plant his feet back into the church, but his history with violence and drugs kept him an outsider. The church he had known since he was five years old wouldn't have him. Within a few short months he lost everything and found himself homeless again sleeping behind a dumpster in the church parking lot. He didn’t need their religion or want their approval, but it was as close to God as he felt he could get.

At night, when the service was over, he would sneak into the sanctuary and roll under a pew, waiting in the darkness until the last person had left. Under the dim light of the cross he sat at the piano, pouring out his heart on its keys. He had nothing, and at times it felt like it was only music keeping him going. Some nights he would play until the sunrise, picturing himself in front of a crowd, pouring out his suffering in song, turning it into a path back to God for anyone who had been drug through the mud like him. The more he played in that darkness the more it became the light at the end of his tunnel. It was at that moment he knew; this was what he was meant to do with whatever life he had ahead of him.

With nowhere else to go and no one to lean on he eventually found himself doing whatever he could just to eat. Some nights he pulled from a fast food dumpster, other nights he stole. But no matter how far he stumbled down that moral blackhole there was always something inside pulling at his heart. Fed up with clawing for scraps he stole a car and was able to work up enough money for drugs. But the balance between selling using was a dance he couldn’t seem to master. The pain was too great and the need to fill the ever growing void inside of him was a hunger beyond even the need for food.

It was there, on the roach ridden floors of a filthy crack-house he began writing what would become his first album; My Life’s Prayer. A cry from the deepest part of his soul, at the darkest place in his life, to the God that had once delivered him from bloodshed of his childhood. He would hole himself up in a bathroom with a boombox, away from the noise of the dealers and dealt. Surrounded by filth and feces he wrote. He wrote like only the words on his paper could save him, and with each song he climbed a little closer back towards redemption.

When he was nineteen his first love from high school finally crossed that ocean. They had nothing, nowhere to go, no idea how to start, but they had each other. One December night as the temperatures dropped into the thirties they clung to each other as they struggled to sleep on the pavement, Cameron peeling off every layer of clothing he could to cover her pregnant body. He didn’t know how to be a father, but somehow he hoped that in that child’s life he might find enough purpose to keep living.

He eventually found work as a maintenance man on the Southside of Atlanta and began the slow climb of learning how to provide for a family, navigating the balance between his reality and his dreams. He spent his days walking several miles to and from work for a job he hated, and his nights making music until he couldn't hold his eyes open. His first local gig was in Clayton County Georgia, then more followed, but getting through any show was difficult. On call 24 hours a day meant that most nights he would find himself having to leave the stage to unclog a toilet or fix a busted pipe.