Jelly Roll's Complete Transformation

The following article mentions addiction issues.

There are few music artists within recent years to have exploded in the public consciousness so quickly and so profoundly as Jelly Roll. It wasn't that long ago, in fact, that he was a struggling rapper playing small gigs that paid so little that he lived out of the van he drove from town to town. 

He didn't have the backing of a major label, but what he did have was an innate ability to connect with listeners on a deeply emotional level. "When I first started music they told me I didn't have a chance," he wrote in a 2020 Facebook post. "They said my voice wasn't cool enough. They said I wasn't marketable. ... They said I was too fat and too trashy." In that post, he revealed that he then had 1.3 million listeners on Spotify each month, while another 1.1 million subscribed to his YouTube channel —  a remarkable achievement for an independent artist without a big label's machine behind him.

You'd better believe those labels began calling, and he ultimately signed with one. Since then, he's released two hit albums and several popular singles, taken home shelves full of music-industry awards, and watched his Spotify numbers soar through the roof (as of this writing, he boasts nearly 13 million monthly listeners). There's no question that he's had a meteoric rise to the top, and it's only just begun. This is how he got here.

Jelly Roll was born Jason Bradley DeFord in the Antioch area of Nashville, Tennessee. Jelly Roll is not a name he adopted upon becoming famous — his mother bestowed the nickname on him when he was young and it stuck. His father, Horace "Buddy" DeFord, worked for a wholesale meat business, but also pulled together some extra cash by moonlighting as a bookie, taking bets for an illegal gambling operation. From as early as he can remember, his mother struggled with addiction while also coping with mental health issues. While that would seem to be an atypical or tragic childhood for many, for Jelly Roll it was just the way it was. "I knew my father booked bets. I knew my mother struggled with drugs," he explained in an interview with "CBS Sunday Morning." "So, to me, this was just what you did."

Jelly Roll grew up poor and by the time he entered his teen years, he began gravitating toward petty crime. In fact, he's the first to admit that he was a handful for his parents and caused them no end of grief over the course of his adolescence. "Many times the police knocked on my mother's door looking for me, many nights she went to sleep worried the phone would ring in the middle of the night and something would've happened bad, many nights she prayed and worried if I would ever get my life together," he wrote in a Facebook post.

Dabbling in various criminal enterprises eventually caught up with Jelly Roll. He was arrested for the first time at 14, and it wouldn't be his last. Over the next decade or so, Jelly Roll became familiar with incarceration, first in juvenile detention centers before landing in prison. The charges varied, ranging from drugs (possessing with the intent to sell), shoplifting, and robbery. "There was a time in my life where I truly thought ... this was it," he told "CBS Sunday Morning" of what he saw as the inevitability of remaining behind bars.

His brushes with the law took a darkly serious turn when he was charged with aggravated assault at the age of 16. Because of the severity of the incident, he was charged as an adult, not a juvenile — and he faced a potential sentence of 20 years. "They were talking about giving me more time than I'd been alive," he recalled in a 2023 interview with Billboard. "I was charged as an adult years before I could buy a beer, lease an apartment, get a pack of cigarettes."

He was sentenced to eight years behind bars but wound up serving just over a year. He spent the next seven years on probation and wound up returning to prison several times in the years that followed. "I feel like the justice system at that point kind of parked me on my only set path," he reflected.

It was during an incarceration for drugs in 2008 that a guard knocked on Jelly Roll's cell door to deliver some news. "He said, 'DeFord, you had a kid today.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Yeah, yeah, you had a child.' And I was like, 'What's her name?' And he said, 'Hell, I don't know,'" he recalled for "CBS Sunday Morning." 

As he told People, he's come to see that one moment as when everything changed for him, forcing him to confront the realization that he was a father with a responsibility to get his life back on track — and fast. "I compare it to the Christian scripture of when Saul turned into Paul on the Damascus Road," he said. "It was kind of that moment for me."

With some hard time left to serve, Jelly Roll began to use his time productively. He began by studying for his GED, an attempt to make up for all the school that he'd skipped; he passed on his first attempt. Recalling that period in an interview with The Guardian, he promised himself he would do "whatever it took not to go to jail or get shot and killed." He gave himself two options: study to become a social worker or focus on the music he'd been making since his teenage years. He chose music.

After his release from prison, Jelly Roll was finally able to see his daughter, Bailee Ann DeFord, meeting her for the first time when he attended a party celebrating her second birthday. "I grilled hamburgers and hot dogs," he told Billboard.

Committed to being a part of his daughter's life, he realized there was another aspect of his life he needed to confront: drugs. To be fair, Jelly Roll is hardly someone who'd be described as sober — he's been candid about his continued use of marijuana and alcohol, but he realized he needed to put the harder stuff behind him. "I had to get rid of the lean [codeine-laced drink], the pills, the cocaine," he told The Guardian. "I didn't have a choice. It was me or them, and I had to learn to love myself."

Jelly Roll is cognizant that his particular brand of quasi-sobriety certainly isn't for everyone, but he insists that it has worked for him. "I walk the line when I talk about my recovery out of respect for the people that have actually worked the [program] and completely sobered up," he explained. That said, he's experienced the depths of addiction, and the harrowing songs he's written about the subject have connected with people who, like him, have lost loved ones because of it. "Somebody save me, me from myself," he sings in his single "Save Me." "I've spent so long livin' in hell."

Ever since childhood, Jelly Roll had been a fan of rap music. "The culture I was first exposed to was hip-hop," he told Billboard. "Not even just music, but the culture — breakdancing, graffiti, freestyling, the clothing." As he immersed himself in Nashville's burgeoning rap scene, he began creating his own music. As he grew more confident in his rap skills, he took his songs into a recording studio, and emerged with CDs that he'd hand out to his customers while dealing drugs. "I'm just like, 'Yo, here's a sack of weed. Here's a gram of coke. Here's a mixtape.' Know what I'm saying? 'I rap, too!' It was like my business card," he explained while speaking with "CBS Sunday Morning." "Even my drug dealing, to me, was always a means to music." 

He experienced his first brush with success in 2010, when his rap single "Pop Another Pill" became a modest hit. For the next decade he would pursue a rap career, slogging away in small clubs while slowly building an ever-increasing following.

As his popularity grew and he made a gradual shift from rap to country, he continued to meet resistance from the powers that be among the country music establishment. "[I was told] nobody's gonna buy a 400-pound man singing sad songs," he told The Guardian. "Like, it's just not in the bingo card for what the climate of music is."

Jelly Roll was still in the up-and-coming phase of his rap career when he unveiled his 2013 album, "Whiskey, Weed & Waffle House." The cover art offered a literal depiction of the title, featuring a marijuana leaf, a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey, and the logo for the Waffle House restaurant chain. 

His new musical offering quickly attracted attention — but not exactly the kind he'd expected. That became clear when he received a letter from a Waffle House attorney who threatened to sue him for using the restaurant's logo without permission. "When I first got the cease and desist letter I thought somebody was pulling my chain," he explained (via HipHopDX). "I thought, 'Surely I'm not known enough for Waffle House to give a s*** about me using their name." Jelly Roll responded by immediately altering the cover of the mixtape, ditching the offending logo and changing the title to "Whiskey, Weed & Women."

In 2021, he took to Instagram to reveal that he'd since come to realize that Waffle House's threat of a lawsuit provided him loads of free publicity. As he recalled, the legal skirmish warranted a major feature on the Gawker website and even became a monologue joke on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." "Long story short my fat a** holds no grudges ," he wrote, adding that he's remained a loyal Waffle House customer. "I still come by one anytime I'm drunk or hungover," he added.

While performing in Las Vegas in 2015, Jelly Roll met his future wife, Bunnie Xo. Their road to romance was a rocky one, given that he was so broke that he couldn't afford hotel rooms when he was on tour, instead sleeping in his van. Additionally, Bunnie was an escort who had a boyfriend at the time. 

Once Bunnie ditched that boyfriend, the two began dating. One night in 2016, she was watching him perform at a Vegas club when he surprised her with an impetuous marriage proposal. She agreed to be his wife, and, given they were in an area literally surrounded by wedding chapels, they figured there was no point in having a long engagement. "I'm like, 'F*** it, let's just go now.' She's like, 'The courthouse is open for like ... 44 more minutes," he recalled in a TikTok video.

The marriage has endured, and in 2023 they renewed their vows at the same Vegas chapel where they got hitched. This time, Bunnie was decked out in a stunning white gown. Jelly Roll commemorated their second wedding in a video shared on TikTok with the caption, "7 years ago we stumbled into this little chapel in Vegas black out drunk," he wrote. "My only regret was never seeing her in a dress."

In 2016, Jelly Roll was awarded custody of daughter Bailee Ann DeFord, the culmination of a long process that had begun even before he became involved with his wife, Bunnie Xo. Appearing on the "Bussin' with the Boys" podcast, he recalled a difficult conversation early in their relationship. "I have to sit Bunnie down and go, 'Look, I have a kid that you know about that I'm fixing to have to get full custody of,'" he said. "'There's also a woman out there that's pregnant with a kid of mine.' Bunnie is just like, 'Whew, man, that's a lot.' She was like, 'But I got you.'"

One big hurdle in winning custody of his daughter was his status as a flat-broke ex-con, and Jelly Roll credits Bunnie for playing an instrumental role in overcoming those particular obstacles. As he explained, she got them a home that included a room for Bailee Ann and paid for a lawyer — even though she wasn't sure where their relationship was headed. "She said, 'No matter what happens with us, I'm gonna help you get this little girl," Jelly Roll recalled while choking back tears. "Bunnie bankrolled the whole s***, and she never talks about that," he added.

Jelly Roll's daughter, Bailee Ann, shared her thoughts in a 2022 Instagram post. "In 2016 my life changed forever, for the better," she wrote. "My dad got custody of me, and so did his wife."

The latter half of the 2010s proved to be a make-or-break period for Jelly Roll as he continued to build his fanbase, show by show, while evolving from hip-hop to country. It paid off in 2020 when he posted a music video for an acoustic ballad, "Save Me," which announced the new sound he'd been crafting. When the video began racking up views, it didn't take long for Nashville to take notice. "I saw that pain, vulnerability, that tenderness," Jon Loba, president of BMG Nashville told Billboard. "I loved his vocal. I just said, 'That's a country song.' I was convinced his storytelling, his heart, and his brand would be accepted by our genre."

Loba signed Jelly Roll to his label, and in September 2021 he released his first major-label album, "Ballads of the Broken," led by hit singles "Dead Man Walking," and "Son of a Sinner." "Dead Man Walking" gave Jelly Roll his first-ever No. 1 single on country radio, while "Son of a Sinner" proved to be a huge breakthrough with a slow build; in January 2023, the single topped the charts — 10 months after it had been released.

In February 2023, Jelly Roll set a record by spending 25 weeks in the top spot of Billboard's emerging artists chart. Weeks earlier, he'd sold out Nashville's Bridgestone Arena, leaving no doubt that he was a musical force to be reckoned with. 

Perhaps the biggest theme permeating Jelly Roll's music is the stranglehold that addiction can take on someone's life — not surprising, given his own experiences with substance abuse, and what he's seen friends and family members go through.

All of that came into play in January 2024 when he travelled to Washington, D.C. to lobby for anti-fentanyl legislation before the Senate's Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. "I've attended more funerals than I care to share with y'all," he said in his speech, reported CNN. "I could sit here and cry for days about the caskets I've carried of people I love dearly, deeply, in my soul." 

In his remarks, Jelly Roll encouraged the senators in attendance to pass the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, a bill that targeted money-laundering as a way to shut down fentanyl traffickers in Mexico and China, which in turn would hopefully lessen the epidemic of overdose deaths. He addressed his own criminal past, and the role that he played in getting drugs — including fentanyl — into people's hands during his drug-dealing days. "I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about, just like these drug dealers are doing right now when they're mixing every drug on the market with fentanyl," he said. "And they're killing the people we love." Jelly Roll's efforts proved to be successful when, in April 2024, the bill was signed into law. 

During the first few months of 2024, Jelly Roll's fans began noticing that there was a little less of him to love. That was certainly evident on May 7, when he competed in the 2 Bears 5K, a marathon hosted by comedians Bert Kreischer and Tom Segura as part of the Netflix is a Joke comedy festival.  

Interviewed by People after competing in his first-ever 5K, Jelly Roll revealed that he'd been training for the event, embarking on a diet-and-exercise regimen in preparation for the race. "I'm probably down 70-something pounds," he revealed. "I've been really kicking a**, man. I'm doing two to three miles a day, four to six days a week. I'm doing 20 to 30 minutes in the sauna, six minutes in a cold plunge every day. I'm eating healthy right now."

Having weighed in at over 500 pounds at one point, he felt he'd made some significant progress but conceded that he still had a long road ahead of him. "I was thinking, I plan on losing another 100, 100-and-something [pounds]," he said of his ultimate goal. Jelly Roll also gushed about how great he'd been feeling since he began his weight loss journey. "If I feel this good down this weight, man, I can only imagine what I'm going to feel like by the time I go on tour," he said.

Having conquered the world of music in a remarkably short period of time, Jelly Roll next set his sights on Hollywood. That crystallized in 2024 when he made his acting debut in the Paramount+ TV series "Tulsa King," opposite big-screen action hero Sylvester Stallone. The singer didn't have to stretch his acting muscles too much, given that he was playing himself in a scene in which he meets Stallone's character, mobster Dwight Manfredi, at the latter's new cannabis club. 

For Jelly Roll, there was no better show on TV on which to make his acting debut. "Dude, I'm such a hard-core 'Tulsa King' fan that me and my wife binge-watched the whole first season the first day it dropped," he told USA Today. The opportunity came about courtesy of Stallone's daughter, Sistine, who'd become a friend of Jelly Roll and got the wheels turning. "I owe Sistine forever for getting me to be part of my favorite show," he added. 

Jelly Roll wasn't done with acting, and the following year he landed a guest spot in another TV series, CBS drama "Fire Country." This time, he wasn't playing himself, but a character called Noah, an ex-convict struggling to turn his life around as a health care worker. "I really found myself in this guy," Jelly Roll said in an on-set interview, via Country Living. "When I came home from my last time being incarcerated, I was so determined to change who I was as a human. If music didn't work, I have a feeling I wouldn't have been far fetched from being Noah working someplace just trying to help people."

As previously noted, Jelly Roll dedicated himself to losing weight while preparing for a 5K in 2024, but he actually started making dietary and fitness changes before then. The hitmaker dove headfirst into his weight loss journey back in 2022, and has remained committed to the process. When he spoke to People in November 2024, he shared that he'd already shed somewhere between 60 and 70 pounds while he was on tour that year alone, and he planned on losing more.

A big part of this change Jelly Roll was experiencing had to do with the attitude he now brought to his concert tours, which shifted the focus from partying and debauchery to health and fitness. "And now our tour culture is around good eating and around exercising and doing emotional check-ins with our crew every day," he explained.

Another big factor was changing his lifestyle, and confronting the nature of how he approached and consumed food. "The battle was with the food addiction, changing the way I've looked at food for the last 39 years," he said. "I've never had a healthy relationship with food, so that was the hard part. But once you get into that discipline and commitment, it's like an avalanche. Once that little snowball started rolling, it was on its way."

During the summer of 2025, Jelly Roll embraced another acting role — of sorts, that is — when he teamed up with pro wrestler Randy Orton to take on Drew McIntyre and YouTuber Logan Paul at WWE SummerSlam. A lifelong pro wrestling fan, he was understandably thrilled to be part of a real match held in front of thousands of fans cheering him on. Reflecting on his journey to the ring during a WWE interview, he shared a memory of walking out of a WWE match when he was 13 years old. "If I'm telling that kid he's wrestling at SummerSlam, he's jumping out of his skin," he said. 

Pulling off his first bona fide wrestling match required a significant degree of preparation, and Jelly Roll embarked on a rigorous training regimen that bolstered the diet-and-exercise program he'd already undertaken. "This is about belief — believing in myself — and wanting to selfishly be a part of a beautiful moment," he added.

Jelly Roll and Orton lost the match — which, surprisingly, had been exactly how he'd wanted it. As he revealed when appearing on wrestler Cody Rhodes' "What Do You Wanna Talk About" podcast, he told WWE head honcho Paul "Triple H" Levesque that he insisted on losing. "No celebrity has ever taken an L," he said of making WWE history as the first celebrity wrestler to ever choose to lose.

Over the course of his career, Jelly Roll has collaborated with numerous artists. These have included country singers Dustin Lynch ("Chevrolet"), Craig Morgan ("Almost Home"), and Lainey WIlson ("Save Me"). September 2025 saw the release of arguably his biggest collab yet: "Living Proof," a joint effort with legendary New Jersey band Bon Jovi. The track was a rerecording of the song from the veteran rockers' 2024 "Forever" album, set to appear in the 2025 release "Forever (Legendary Edition)," which also includes the band's collabs with Bruce Springsteen, Avril Lavigne, Robbie Williams, and other artists. 

Jelly Roll got to know frontman Jon Bon Jovi when he performed at the 2024 MusiCares Person of the Year Gala in his honor. A friendship was struck, which led to this musical melding of the minds. 

When Jon Bon Jovi interviewed Jelly Roll for a 2024 issue of Interview magazine, it was clear that the camaraderie between the two men had already been growing. "That felt like I was just conversing with a friend," Jelly Roll said. The "Livin' on a Prayer" singer shared that sentiment: "That's the same talk we'd have at a coffee shop if I'd been in New Jersey this morning."

September 2025 also saw Jelly Roll embark on another first, when he took to the stage outside Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican in Rome. In fact, he was among a select group of performers — which also included Pharrell Williams, Andrea Bocelli, and Jennifer Hudson — to perform at the "Grace for the World" concert, in celebration of the Vatican's Jubilee Year. 

In conjunction with the show, Jelly Roll also met Pope Leo XIV, sharing a photo via Instagram of himself shaking the pontiff's hand. "From rock bottom to holy ground," he wrote in the caption. "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them."

During that same trip, Jelly Roll decided to continue his long history of jumping into bodies of water when he arrived at Vatican City, and set his eyes upon a fountain. "He's like, 'Let's go get in the fountain!'" said his wife, Bunnie Xo, during an episode of her "Dumb Blonde" podcast. "And there's literally Vatican police sitting right there, just waiting for us to do something. And I'm like, 'No, let's not.'" Ultimately, Bunnie's cooler head prevailed, and the Vatican fountain was not breached — albeit not without some considerable cajoling. "I had to talk this man off the ledge about not getting in the freakin' Vatican fountain," she recalled.

When Jelly Roll appeared onstage in Rome, that concert was live-streamed for an audience of millions throughout the world. Fans who watched couldn't help but notice that Jelly Roll had dropped even more weight — nearly 200 pounds less, in fact.

Jelly Roll joked about his noticeable weight loss transformation when he posted a photo on Instagram, in which he's posing next to a large column in Rome. "I can fit in Louis Vuitton now," he joked in the caption. "Pray for my bank account."

He opened up about his weight loss journey during an April 2025 appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" When it came to taking weight off, he'd been on a roll. "I would guess that I've lost an entire Jimmy Kimmel," he quipped. The weight loss had proven to be life-changing, in an assortment of ways, opening doors to things he simply hadn't been able to do when he was heavier. "For the non-fluffy people in the world, I'll give y'all [an] educational course here: To do all the fun stuff in life, you've got to be under 250," he explained. "So my goal, I want to skydive. I want to ride a roller coaster. I want to ride a bull. I know it sounds crazy, I want to wrestle an alligator ... I got a list of things I want to do." 

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).