Who is Country Music’s Biggest New Star, Jelly Roll?

You can’t turn on country radio or watch an awards show without seeing the smiling, tattooed face of the newest male star in the genre, Jelly Roll. But who is this grinning hit songwriter and performer, this emotive, passionate artist who is taking country music by storm?

For those who aren’t familiar with his backstory, his years spent in rap music, or his Nashville origins, keep reading. It’s about time we all got to know this diamond hiding in the rough.

Nashville, Tennessee

Born on December 4, 1984, just before the new year, Jason Bradley DeFord came into the world in a region of Music City called Antioch, about a dozen miles from Nashville’s downtown. As a kid, he grew up troubled and poor.

DeFord’s father sold meat and ran bets as a bookie while his mother struggled with mental illness. Jelly Roll was not hanging out honing his twang as a youth. Instead, he was running the streets, doing and dealing drugs, and attempting petty crimes. He was arrested at 14 after trying to rob someone of their weed. Later, at 23 years old, Jelly Roll earned his G.E.D. while in prison.

“In the beginning, I did a lot of drugs. I drank a lot of codeine, a lot of cough syrup,” he told Billboard. “I took a lot of Xanax, did a lot of cocaine, just really took it overboard. I’ve had years — dude, I don’t remember years. Also, addiction for me is more than just my problems. My child’s mother disappeared from her life for almost five years because of a heroin addiction. Thankfully, she’s sober and back in her life now. My mother has struggled with addiction her whole life. When you grow up in a middle- and lower-class community, no one sees the effects of drug abuse like those people.”

Hip-Hop Music

Later in his life, Jelly Roll found focus in hip-hop music and culture. He began by writing poetry, which later turned into rap. “The culture I was first exposed to was hip-hop,” Jelly Roll told Billboard in 2021. “Not even just music, but the culture — breakdancing, graffiti, freestyling, the clothing. I didn’t know there was this other country music culture in town. You just knew the culture you were exposed to.”

Music was the thing that gave his life meaning. “Complete vulnerability is my constant goal in writing,” he told the outlet. “Music was the way I found out I wasn’t alone.” Jelly Roll sold rap mixtapes that he made, out of his car. In 2010, his collab with Memphis rapper Lil Wyte, “Pop Another Pill,” garnered the duo some six-million streams on YouTube.

Genre-Bender

From 2011 through 2021, Jelly Roll released a number of collaborative albums and solo albums, but it was his major label country music debut, Whitsitt Chapel, released this year in 2023 that made the artist a burgeoning household name.

Prior to that release, Jelly Roll made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, country music’s most hollowed space, in 2021. Not long after, in 2022, he garnered his first No. 1 song on rock radio with the song, “Dead Man Walking.” And in January of 2023, it was his country song, “Son of a Sinner,” that earned the artist his first country No. 1.

All of sudden, Jelly Roll went from a mainstay in dirty south rap to a genre-bending hitmaker in multiple genres.

“I was joking with someone the other day and they said, ‘You dress like someone who’s been exposed to four different things,’” he told Billboard. “And I am — my sister listened to The Offspring and Sublime and Chris Cornell. My brother played Tupac and Too $hort, and [my mother] played outlaw country. To this day, I dress like a rocker, wear jewelry and a hat like a rapper, and boots like a country guy.”

CMT Awards

While some had heard Jelly Roll’s music on the radio, many hadn’t seen Jelly Roll up close and in person, so to speak, until earlier in 2023 at the CMT Music Awards, which is billed as country music’s only entirely fan-voted awards show.

During the broadcast, fans got to see Jelly Roll not once, not twice but three times as he accepted awards for his song, “Son of a Sinner.” Jelly Roll with his large persona and seemingly bigger grin became a star in an instant, winning trophies for Male Video of the Year, Male Breakthrough Video of the Year, and Digital-First Performance of the Year.

And while that award show took place on April 2, 2023, Jelly Roll wasted no time, releasing Whitsitt Chapel just two months later on June 2.

Whitsitt Chapel

The album features a litany of hits from the artist, who is earning a reputation for speaking for the downtrodden and the down and out. With songs like “Hungover in a Church Pew,” “Dancing with the Devil,” “Need a Favor” and “Save Me,” Jelly Roll knows what it’s like to be on the fringes. From early on to even now.

The record also includes guest appearances from those majorly in the spotlight, from Lainey Wilson to Waylon Jennings’ step-grandson, Struggle Jennings. The LP hit No. 2 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and No. 1 on the U.S. Top Rock Albums chart. Now, Jelly Roll has shot into the upper echelon of stardom.

“It’s the first [album] where I’m leaning into nothing but singing,” Jelly Roll told Billboard of the record. “And I was scared. I’m still a little uncomfortable in my voice, to be honest. But ‘Save Me’ was a breakthrough for me, because people could really hear my voice and pain — and I sing from a lifetime of hurt.”

Family Life

The genre-bending country star is married to Bunnie DeFord, also known as Bunnie XO. He is also the father to a daughter, born in 2008, and a son, born in 2016, from prior relationships.

And as he moves forward with his career, he’s able to take care of his family in ways he’d never dreamed of, including buying his mother a house. Something he sings about in the song “Mobile Home.”

“I bought my mom a house once, but she wanted to move back to a trailer to live by her sister,” he recalls. “A 3,000-square-foot house I bought her in Spring Hill [Tennessee] didn’t mean sh–t. I do all these things for her now that I’m successful, but I go see her and she’s still sitting in a trailer, smoking a cigarette, watching Days of Our Lives… So it’s about her, and my lifestyle choices, as well.”

Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images