‘Jelly Roll: Save Me’ Captures Big-Hearted Appeal Of Rapper Turned Country Singer  

In the spring of 2020, Jason “Jelly Roll” DeFord was just another rapper, using mixtapes, social media and club appearances to push along a modest career that had started 9 years earlier. Feeling the pressure of the COVID lockdown and drawing on memories of past mistakes, he poured his heart and soul into a new song and posted it to YouTube that June. “This one is a little bit of a curveball for me,” he said in the description field before asking fans in the comments section whether or not it should even be included on his next album. The song, “Save Me,” would alter the course of his life, re-casting him as a country singer and connecting with millions of people who heard something of themselves in the song. 

The new documentary Jelly Roll: Save Me premiered on Hulu on May 30th and captures his big-hearted appeal. On June 2, DeFord released the album Whitsitt Chapel, which currently sits at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Directed by Bari Pearlman, whose Queen of Meth chronicled the adventures of Midwestern drug dealer Lori Arnold, the bio-doc sees Jelly Roll looking back at his troubled past, giving thanks for his bountiful present and trying to pay forward his good fortune with good deeds. 

Jelly Roll’s sold-out December 2022 performance at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena serves as a bookend. It was a hometown show for DeForest, who grew up 12 miles south of downtown in the “lower middle class” suburb of Antioch. Though his father ran a successful family business, his mother’s struggles with depression and addiction tore apart his home and drove the young Jelly Roll to seek solace and validation on the streets. He never got past middle school, racked up numerous drug arrests and would spend a large part of his late teens and early adulthood incarcerated. 

A corrections officer told Jelly Roll he was a father before he even knew his daughter’s name. He credits the incident with inspiring him to turn his life around and devote his energies to music. Still, drugs and crime would exert a pull on him and his loved ones. He only gained custody of his daughter because of her mother’s own addiction and on the morning of a triumphant show at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater he learns a friend from the old neighborhood has died from a stray bullet in a shoot-out. 

Jelly Roll lived in his van while trying to make a name for himself in the crowded field of unsigned hip hop artists. Along the way he met future wife Bunnie XO, a former sex worker and host of the Dumb Blonde podcast. While Bunnie admits a shared love of partying cemented their relationship, the couple sobered up after gaining custody of DeFord’s daughter. Although, sober to Jelly Roll means, “I still smoke a little weed to keep my head straight I will still get blackout drunk and every now and then we’ll do something wild.”     

As Jelly Roll’s country star continues to rise, Bunnie seems skeptical of where they fit in. “All I know is that I married a rapper and now we’re at the Country Music Awards,” she tells an interviewer on the red carpet. Their bond, however, is strong and footage of them celebrating Christmas with DeFord’s now teenage daughter shows a loving home.   

The price of success is non-stop touring. Jelly Roll confides he suffers from both imposter syndrome and survivor’s guilt as well as depression. Though he has learned to keep his depression at bay, he sometimes still needs to cancel his plans and spend the day in bed. His depression and addictive personality are also intertwined with his obesity. On tour, he smokes too much pot and needs an IV drip in order to combat dehydration and exhaustion.  

Jelly Roll’s transparency about his own struggles are hard-coded into his music. Confession, contrition and gratitude are common themes. On stage he thanks his fans profusely for their support in between an avalanche of expletives, capped off with, “I love your motherfuckers.” 

He says his live show is a “healing experience.” He is a reflection of his audience, hardscrabble common folk whose lives aren’t always easy. Some come backstage in tears, talking about how his songs echo their own lives and make them feel like they’re not alone. It’s powerful stuff. 

When not on tour, Jelly Roll visits rehab facilities and youth detention centers, to share his story. He says if he could get sober and get his life together, they can too. He tells those in rehab that he traded his addiction to drugs for an addiction to music. He brings Thanksgiving dinners from Cracker Barrel to a juvenile hall where he was once locked up and offers to buy one youthful offender a guitar. Before his show at the Bridgestone Arena he announces he’s donating a quarter of a million dollars of the proceeds to local youth outreach and scholarship programs.     

As a film Jelly Roll: Save Me uses all the same devices of other recent mid-career bio-docs, from heartfelt confessions to revisiting the old neighborhood and ending with an epic feel-good hometown show. Still, it’s hard not to root for Jelly Roll, who seems sincere in both his gratitude and his desire to help others, whether through charity work or merely lending a big shoulder for his fans to literally cry on. After select dates through the early summer, Jelly Roll’s ‘Backroad Baptism’ tour kicks off July 28 and will run through the fall. 

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.