Jelly Roll

Born in Nashville in 1984, Jason DeFord, better known as Jelly Roll, first emerged on the Southern US rap scene, developing a style shaped by underground hip‑hop and mixtapes circulating online around 2010. Jelly Roll gained attention within the independent Southern rap community before releasing a series of collaborative projects and making his mark with the album The Big Sal Story in 2013, followed by Sobriety Sucks in 2016 and Addiction Kills in 2017, where recurring themes of addiction, family and a daily life rooted in Nashville’s working‑class neighborhoods become clear. From Goodnight Nashville in 2018 and especially A Beautiful Disaster in 2020, he moved further toward blending rap, country and rock, with a greater emphasis on singing and ballads. That evolution continued with Ballads of the Broken in 2021 and Whitsitt Chapel in 2023, establishing him on American country and rock stages while retaining the narrative, introspective aesthetic of his hip‑hop beginnings.