Jelly Roll got his start by creating and performing rap and hip-hop songs, but he's always had a deep love of country music. Jelly Roll made his long-awaited Grand Ole Opry debut on November 9, 2021, singing "Son of a Sinner." But when he returned, he made sure he honored country music's roots, by singing a Waylon Jennings song.
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"My second Grand Ole Opry performance, I sang Waylon," Jelly Roll tells American Songwriter. "Because it was important to me ... In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, and to the community, it matters to some. I just love country music. Always have. We flock towards the people (that know their history)."
Jelly Roll says being invited to perform at the Opry was a pivotal moment for him, and still is every time he sings on the sacred stage.
"Being invited to play the Grand Ole Opry, for me, it's the ultimate overcoming of everything," he says. "I represent a group of people that would have never believed that anything like this could happen to anybody like us."
How The Grand Ole Opry Changed Jelly Roll
Perhaps ironically, one of Jelly Roll's most pivotal moments also happened at the Grand Ole Opry, although it was before he was a household name. The Nashville native was in the audience when Craig Morgan sang "Almost Home."
"Shortly after I got out of jail, I sat right there in row seven, and I cried like a baby and watched him sing," Jelly Roll recalls (via American Songwriter). "I remember thinking 'I want to make people feel the way he makes me feel right now.'"
Now good friends, Jelly Roll sang "Almost Home" with Morgan as part of Morgan's 2023 Enlisted project.
"It was special," Morgan says of singing the song with Jelly Roll. "It was a full circle event. After, he stood on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, telling that story and us doing that song together. Everybody talks about ... how important that song was to him. What they don't understand or don't know, it was just as impacting, his story was just as impacting on me as the song was to him."
