Jelly Roll: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Jelly Roll will perform at Billboard‘s inaugural Billboard Country Live in Concert event in Nashville on June 6.

In January 1999, one month after he turned 14, Jason DeFord was baptized by full immersion at Whitsitt Chapel Baptist Church in Antioch, Tenn. By the end of that year, he was incarcerated for the first, but not the last, time. For the next decade, DeFord cycled in and out of juvenile and then adult correctional facilities for crimes ranging from aggravated robbery to drug dealing.

“I got baptized in here some 20 years ago and have since done nothing but go to prison, treat a bunch of people wrong, make a lot of mistakes in life, turn it around, [then] go on to be a f–king multimillionaire and help as many people as I possibly can,” says DeFord today, a hint of awe in his voice as he sits in a red upholstered pew at Whitsitt Chapel. The 38-year-old — now better known as the inspirational, tattoo-covered artist Jelly Roll — recently returned to the church for the first time in decades. “It’s the f–king wildest story ever to me — maybe because I’m the one f–king in the middle of it — but that sh-t’s crazy.”

Jelly (whose mother christened him with the nickname when he was little) has risen from the streets of Antioch to the upper reaches of Billboard’s rap, rock and now country charts, and even played the revered Grand Ole Opry. But he still struggles to reconcile that hopeless past with his prosperous present and seemingly limitless future. On the gut-wrenchingly raw Whitsitt Chapel, out June 2 on Bailee & Buddy/Stoney Creek Records/BMG, Jelly relives his search for refuge and redemption in a world where sinners outnumber saints and hell often feels closer than heaven. As he sings on “Save Me”: “I’m a lost cause/Baby don’t waste your time on me/I’m so damaged beyond repair/Life has shattered my hopes and dreams.”

“That’s what country is, anyway, right? Three chords and the solid truth,” says Jelly, paraphrasing legendary songwriter Howard Harlan’s oft-quoted description of a good country song.

Read the full Jelly Roll Billboard cover story here.