Jelly Roll Recalls Being Incarcerated at 13, Says He Was 'Still a Bad Person' in His Early 30s: 'The Entitlement I Had'

Award-winning country music star Jelly Roll admits to past experiences that drove him — and he’s still looking to make amends.

In this week’s episode Intentionally with Jay ShettyThe 39-year-old singer speaks candidly about his criminal past, which began at an early age.

“It’s a deep-seated insecurity early on. I was always the bigger kid,” Jelly recalls of her childhood. “So naturally I had a little chip on my shoulder as a kid.” While navigating his life in Antioch, Tennessee in an “active” neighborhood, the singer said he was looking for “acceptance” and “the streets will always give you that.”

As for what landed him in jail, Jelly explains, “I got into a fight with a kid and they had chain wallets. While we were wrestling, I grabbed a chain wallet to try to hit him with it, and it was a case of aggravated robbery , so I ended up in the system for about 20-something months when I was 13 for that aggravated robbery.”

Jelly Roll on Purpose with Jay Shetty.

Courtesy of On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Jelly Roll’s rise amid mental health battle inspires fans in new doc: ‘Music Was My Hail Mary’

Jelly still feels guilty about her past, telling Shetty: “I look back on those years, Jay, and I’m so embarrassed to talk about them. I was still a bad person in my early 30s, but I mean, I was really terrible kid until my mid-20s People always said, ‘You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met.’ I said, ‘I’m so glad you haven’t met anyone who knew me 20 years ago.'”

He even hopes to make amends with his robbery victim more than 20 years later and has a list of people to apologize to, but “I just haven’t gotten that far yet.”

“No matter how old I was, I had no business to take from anyone,” said the singer. “Just this right I had that the world owed me enough to come and take your things. How horrible, terribly way of looking at life and people, just what a terrible way to interact with the Earth.”

Why Jelly Roll found ‘comfort’ after starting ‘court-ordered’ AA meetings at 14

Jelly Roll is performing in Seattle, Washington in August 2024.

Matt Hayward/Getty

Jelly also referred to his late father, who died in 2019. Although the two had always been close, they became even closer after the singer escaped the “vicious cycle of the justice system.”

“Me and him started getting really close and I started leaning on him and we’d go to happy hour three or four days a week, every day. And we’d sit in the same place at the same bar and a memory and a street in Nashville called Tin roof from 4 to 6.”

His mother, who dealt with drug addiction and mental health issues, also influenced Jelly’s future. “She started to become really withdrawn. There were 20 years in my life when I didn’t see my mother without a nightgown, but maybe twice ever,” he recalled. “But I connected music to her mental health, didn’t I? Because the few times she was out of that bedroom and at that kitchen table, she thrived.”

The couple bonded over music, especially as Jelly’s music career began to take shape. “When she seems at her healthiest, there’s always music playing. There’s always a record player…it got to the point where if she was downstairs with her girlfriend, she’d call me up to read whatever [song] I wrote was. Looking back now, you don’t realize how nourishing it is.”

Jelly Roll is performing in Seattle, Washington in August 2024.

Matt Hayward/Getty

Jelly Roll’s 2 Kids: All About Daughter Bailee Ann and Son Noah

Jelly Roll is also a proud father and hopes his two children Bailee Ann, 16, and Noah, 7, will learn from his mistakes. “She’s going to be everything I haven’t been in my life,” he said of his teenage daughter.

“I was able to do the work and forgive myself for being who I was, but I definitely did a lot of work to change my whole outlook on people and love… I didn’t cry until I was 33. Now I can’t give up, I think, I thought I’d made up for it by now, but I mean, I’ll still, just for no reason, just sob, you know?”

Jelly recently took home the People’s Choice Country Award for his collaboration on “Lonely Road” with mgk. The duo reinvented John Denver’s classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads” for a new audience.

You can catch a Jelly Roll on his Beautifully broken tour, which ends on October 27 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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Source: HIS Education