He’s been on the rise for a long time, but now everything’s coming up Milhouse for Jason Bradley “Jelly Roll” DeFord as he scores his first number-one album on the Billboard 200 chart. The former criminal wants to jettison the negativity in his life as he enters this new phase of fame, and getting rid of one particular “toxic” app is part of that plan.
DeFord rose to prominence in 2022 after scoring hit singles with “Son of a Sinner” and “Need a Favor.” He went on to win three CMT Music Awards in 2023, as well as the New Artist at the ceremony. Then he won Best New Artist at the 66th Annual Grammys. His latest album Beautifully Broken, which debuted on Oct. 11 and just hit number one on the Billboard 200, will push him even further into the mainstream zeitgeist.
The musician’s past is not a sparkling one that’s full of accolades or positivity. He was arrested multiple times in his youth, including for armed robbery when he was just 15 years old. In his new life, he hopes he can be forgiven, a sentiment he shared on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast.
“I really want to have a conversation with them. I’ve thought about reaching out. This has been 24 years ago now. And I just don’t know how that would even start — you know, how I would go about it — because sometimes I wonder if they might have even seen me in passing or are aware of my success.” DeFord is open about his issues with addiction, and he said the victim of his crime is on his “amends list.”
True to this attitude, DeFord took to Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, to share his opinion on the site. He emphatically called it the most extremely negative place to ever exist and likened it to the Wild West. X, he said, makes it OK to be mean to people and provides them a “safe place” to do so. He doesn’t like that there aren’t consequences for that. “I’m out lol,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, people quickly started saying “mean s**t.” One person called the musician “soft af lol.” Another told him to “toughen up buttercup.” Internet personality Andrew Tate said DeFord was describing the most fun app in the world, and then leaving.
Others pointed out that he once posted a picture of himself getting brained on the beach and now has the audacity to take a moral high ground. I’m not sure when he was doing that but people seem to get triggered very easily on X. For the alpha keyword warriors out there, some of them act just as thin-skinned as their Tesla god Musk.
DeFord’s album Beautifully Broken crowns Billboard’s Oct. 26 chart, with 161,000 equivalent album units earned for sales through Oct. 17. He also sold an impressive 114,000 physical albums, something that’s increasingly hard to do in the streaming era. This is his second top-ten album, after 2023’s Whitsitt Chapel. It follows the release of three charting songs in a row: “I Am Not Okay,” “Lonely Road,” and “Liar.”
