Born a natural musician, Jelly Roll wrote countless songs from the sterile chair of his barren prison cell, isolated from the world and left with only his thoughts. But it wasn’t until he knocked down the walls of self-doubt that his poetry prevailed. While he’s always been drawn to music—making mix tapes as a teen and launching his hip hop career in 2003—the honest vulnerability of his vocals had been guarded behind the safety of his rap songs.

With a new daughter inspiring him, the need to make a positive impact on the world became apparent. My drive to help others comes from needing help, Jelly Roll tells us. There were so many times in my life that I needed a blessing or I needed help or I needed somebody to come through for me that, now, when I have an opportunity to try to come through for people, I try to make 
it a point. His desire to help others changed the course of his career.

With honest, raw, and personal storytelling at the heart of country music, the genre naturally started to appear in his albums. Once his soulful, native Nashville twang flowed from his lips with humble conviction on his first true country song, Save Me, a mass of listeners came flocking to his sound. Despite the fact that he had been making music since childhood, with Save Me, Jelly Roll finally found his voice. It wasn’t just that his sincere vulnerability was unmistakenly present in his country vocals. The painful honesty of his lyrics resonated with millions.

His country songs became sermons, and his fans became his loyal congregation.

When he penned the Save Me lyrics I'm so damaged beyond repair / Life has shattered my hopes and my dreams, little did he know that those words couldn’t have been further from the truth. In his mid-thirties, he used his pain to paint a picture of hope for others in the form of second chances. Redemption, to me personally, is a complete turnaround, he tells us. Jelly Roll not only made a complete 180 for himself, turning his “back completely on what was and [going] completely on what’s new,” but he became hellbent on sharing the gift of second chances with the world. It's important that we never give up on people, he explains. I think that's a part of what love is. I think the epitome of love is just not giving up at certain times. I'm just glad that people didn't give up on me and that I had a second chance. I'm a hard guy to talk to about second chances. I'm a big advocate. Mine changed my whole life.

Shortly after his first country single Save Me, came his album Ballads of the Broken, a multi-genre record including hip hop, pop, southern rock, and, with Son of a Sinner, also featured country. Son of a Sinner illustrates a chilling story of struggling between vice and virtue. Due to the sincerity of the lyrics and introspective rawness of Jelly Roll’s vocals, the track hit number one on the Country Airplay chart and inspired Jelly Roll to fully embrace country on his next album, Whitsitt Chapel. A gripping album that features back-to-back hits including Halfway to Hell, Dancing with the Devil, and Need a Favor, Whitsitt Chapel not only cemented Jelly Roll as a top-tier musician, but as an aspirational figure who’s humanizing and uplifting the lost and forgotten.

For Jason Jelly Roll DeFord, it’s not about where you’ve been, but where you’re going. And he has been making it his mission 
to let everyone in on this life-changing secret. That liberating yourself from the past and embracing change is a gift. The first time I heard the phrase, When it's going south, head west, I was in jail. I'll never forget it, he tells us. And to this day, I live by that philosophy, that when everybody's looking left, go right. Sometimes you got to stop and go the other way.

Jelly Roll’s newest country album, Beautifully Broken, breathes a calm serenity into his message of second chances. With tracks like I Am Not Ok and Winning Streak, the album brings peace to pain through compassion.

For Jelly Roll, peace is the road. Peace is smelling that diesel fuel and hearing them tires. Just hearing that rubber rolling, baby. That's peace for me. At first glance, it might seem like the gravel moving under his feet soothes him, or that he finds the quiet rhythm of the humming tour bus relaxing. But a deeper look into the man Jason Jelly Roll DeFord has become since stepping 
out of his jail cell for the last time over 15 years ago would suggest otherwise.

The man who rose from the ashes and set the world ablaze with passion and perspective finds peace hearing the tires take him from sold-out arena to sold-out arena because it delivers him to a new set of ears—a new crowd of listeners that will feel his compassion, his empathy, and his heartfelt message of redemption. It is never too late to start over.

The world's full of more takers than it's ever been full of, he tells us. Somebody's got to start giving. With every heartfelt chorus he belts, Jelly Roll gives audiences the gift of hope, and he heals the hearts of millions.