The Black Keys Open Up About Almost Fighting Jelly Roll: “Scared the Living Crap Out of Me”

Jelly Roll may be one of country music’s rising talents, but a few years ago, he was just a man with a dream when he had a run-in with the band The Black Keys. At the time, a misunderstanding almost caused Jelly Roll to brawl with The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney.

Carney opened up with Audacy about it. Carney explained that he met Jelly Roll back before he was famous. At the time, Jelly Roll was trying to break into the rap industry. He was at a show in Nashville that Jelly Roll also attended.

Carney said, “What had happened was, I met Jelly Roll 13 years ago, before he was famous and he’s just like right out of prison probably, it was 2010. I was with this friend of ours, Harmony Korine, we were in Nashville at this Hip Hop show. Yelawolf was just coming out starting to perform and I went and Jelly Roll was there. I didn’t know who he was.”

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However, things got heated when a misunderstood joke led to Jelly Roll thinking he was being made fun of. As such, the singer challenged Carney to a fight.

“Harmony was joking around about something. Jelly Roll thought we were making fun of him, and he just rolled up to me and just scared the living crap out of me. Like, ‘Do you wanna go…?’ And I was like, ‘Nope, I’m good dude. Nice to meet you though,’” he said.

However, Carney doesn’t have any hard feelings towards Jelly Roll. He believes that the singer was in a different frame of mind then.

“He seems a lot different, he was very angry then. He was a rapper then,” Carney said. “We had just made a Hip Hop record that came out like a year earlier. So, I guess we were kind of on his radar and he might have, I don’t know. He just, he kind of flexed on me and I was like, ‘Oh, you don’t realize I’m a wimp.’ I mean, I can talk some smack, but I’m not backing it up.”

Jelly Roll himself has opened up about his own past to The Guardian. Through music, the singer has explained that he managed to help turn things around.

“I see myself as a broken man that’s trying to put the pieces of the puzzle back together,” he says. “I looked at the whole experience as a cry for help. And it was heard. The music represents so many people that haven’t felt heard.”

[Photo by Jason Koerner/Getty Images for Audacy’s Riptide Music Festival]