Jelly Roll knows his road to the top hasn’t been without setbacks — and while he understands not everyone from his past will be thrilled with his accomplishments, he’s working to redeem himself.
The country star, 39, opens up to PEOPLE in this week’s issue about coming to terms with his early days, during which he was in and out of prison about 40 times over 10 years, starting when he was just 14.
“I’m finishing third on my fix list and I think I’ll feel a little better when I get there,” he says. “I was hitting some rock walls with people who wouldn’t forgive me and I said, ‘God, maybe this has something to do with the fact [that] I haven’t even forgiven myself.”
Jelly Roll for PEOPLE.
Peter Yang
Jelly Roll’s Rules for a Sweet Life: Forgiving Your Past Self, Prioritizing Marriage, and Raising a Brash Teen
Jelly says that when he talks about his past in interviews, he’s often forced to “brush off 10, 12, 15 years of living an extremely crazy, narcissistic, selfish lifestyle,” to sum it up in a short soundbite. But he knows that reality goes much deeper than that.
“It is true that there was a lot of pain there. I hurt a lot of people,” he says. “No matter how much I’ve changed, they still watch and are mad that I’m successful. i understand that. But I’m doing better letting go of the past and realizing that I don’t owe that part of me anything.”
Jelly has previously been open about being “embarrassed” by his behavior as a youth, saying in a recent podcast that he had an inflated sense of “entitlement” in his youth and hoped he could make amends with his robbery victim.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(888x194:890x196)/jelly-roll-cover-rollout-111924-3-7a8e6bde610d4d9db981be30d76a1ff5.jpg)
Jelly Roll for PEOPLE.
Peter Yang
Watch Jelly Roll’s Reaction to His PEOPLE Cover on the 2024 CMA Awards Red Carpet: ‘This is Unreal!’
Since becoming famous, Jelly has dedicated his success to further work, raising money for charity and visiting juvenile detention centers and prisons. The Grammy nominee recently donated pre-orders for his latest album Beautifully broken to four different charities, raising over $1 million.
“Philanthropy is the legacy I hope to leave with music,” he tells PEOPLE. “Music will live on its own… I stopped seeing myself as an entertainer. I realized that we are here to serve. This is the thought when I write, when I perform, when we go to feed the homeless, when we go to talk to children in an educational institution [detention centers] or prison — we just want to be good stewards with what we have.”
For more on Jelly Roll, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere now.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education