Jelly Roll may be nominated for New Artist of the Year at the 2023 Country Music Association Awards — one of five awards he’s up for Wednesday night at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena — but he’s hardly fresh off the farm.
In fact, the Antioch, Tennessee native, behind hits such as “Need a Favor” and current single “Save Me,” started his recording career as a rapper with the hip-hop group SNO, back in 2011 — long before making his country debut with the chart-topping “Son of a Sinner” in 2022.
So really, the only thing “new” about the artist born Jason DeFord is his genre of choice.
“There’s something poetic about a 39-year old man with a 300-song release catalog being nominated for the CMA New Artist award,” Jelly Roll told The Post on a break from award show rehearsals. “It encapsulates my feelings this week, whether I win it or not.”
The music biz vet is the second most-nominated artist on Music City’s biggest night, trailing only Lainey Wilson — “My dance partner at country radio right now,” Jelly Roll points out — with whom he’s up for Musical Event of the Year, for “Save Me.”
What’s more, the dude with the country music tradition-bucking tattooed face is also opening the festivities — singing Single of the Year nominee “Need a Favor.”
“It’s the honor of all honors. Man, it’s a blessing,” said Jelly Roll, who will also perform “Love Can Build a Bridge” with R&B diva K. Michelle — “The voice of God,” he remarked — during a scheduled tribute to the Judds, later in the show.
“I want people to know that I’m here to stay. That’s kind of what my goal is at the CMAs. Even though it took me 20 years, now I gotta prove my staying power,” he said.
But although Jelly Roll is now getting the kind of acclaim and attention as a country artist that he never achieved in the rap game, his heart still belongs to his less celebrated beginnings.
“Hip-hop was my first love,” he says. “I remember when I was a young child, my brothers and sisters put their money together, and they bought me a cassette tape. And it was a single for a song called ‘Rump Shaker’ by Wreckx-N-Effect. And I remember spending an entire summer going, ‘All I wanna do is zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom/And a poom-poom/Just shake ya rump.”
But in addition to battling other rappers, Jelly Roll would also tangle with the law, getting arrested multiple times while serving jail time for drug charges and aggravated robbery.
“Well, it taught me perseverance,” he said of his prison stint, during which he earned his G.E.D. “And it gave me a first-hand lesson on the human I don’t want to be, ‘cause I was a bad human for so long.”
Jelly Roll also struggled with drug addiction — a topic he addresses on “Son of a Sinner,” which won him three trophies at the CMT Awards in April. “We were high as a mother,” he said of recording the tune. “We’d been up all night.”
And while he may now have country cred to spare, Jelly Roll still feels very much connected to hip-hop.
“I’m still as hip-hop as I’ve ever been,” he said. “And my approach to the game is hip-hop.”
Plus, he added, the two genres have more in common than you might think. “Country music started a lot like hip-hop,” he said. “It was a lot of people just telling the stories of the poor white people.”
Still, there are those country traditionalists who are, unlike the CMAs, not ready to accept Jelly Roll as the new big thing.
“I mean, I’ve had to fight a lot of uphill battles,” he said. “I’d be lying if I tell you it still doesn’t get under my skin a little bit. You get nominated for the Country Music [Association] Awards, and the first comment you see under there is, ‘He’s not even country!’ I grew up in Antioch on a creek catching crawfish. You know what I mean? It’s like, ‘Do I need to post a picture of a dead deer?’ I don’t know how much more country I can be.”