On The Rise and Fall of Jelly Roll

Random Notes 25 Comments


It’s over. At least for the most part, and for now. And though the producers of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and other corporate-warped minds might think he’s still the current hot thing or some universally-beloved character, the truth is that Jelly Roll is cold product, and has been for many months now. His stadium tour with Post Malone was a turnout disaster, with the first portions outright cancelled due to low ticket sales, and the second half beset by empty seats and a poor reception by many. Jelly Roll has subsequently stated that he’s taking the next year off from touring to reset.

Jelly Roll’s divorce from wife and svengali Bunny XO is likely to be catastrophic, not from a public relations standpoint—though re-litigating his infidelity probably hasn’t helped. It’s because Bunny XO was the mastermind that got Jelly Roll where he is, or was. He was a half bit semi-famous White Nashville rapper before Bunny and Broken Bow Records hatched the idea to present him as a country music redemption story. The media and awards shows bought it hook, line, and sinker. The public never really did, and the music was an afterthought to the human interest angle.

In recent months, Jelly Roll has found himself in the crosshairs of the right and the left. His speech accepting the Grammy for Best Contemporary Country Album in February for Beautifully Broken was panned on the left for being too Jesus-leaning, yet somehow in previous moments he’d been praised by the same crowd for his fiery sermon-like snake oil charms. They adored Jelly Roll because he didn’t fit the conventional profile of a country star and his music was pop.

But now for multiple reasons, that sentiment has soured, and many see through the performative nature of it all. Jelly Roll never developed into the country music iconoclast they projected upon him. It doesn’t help that he then got “coded red,” even though he didn’t really do anything to earn that distinction, and has personally clarified he has no strong political affiliations—which for some on the left, is tantamount to a convenient cop-out, or completely unacceptable in their “total war” perspective.

Now the right is coming for Jelly Roll because he made a joke about Donald Trump’s weight on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which he’s hosting this week while Jimmy takes vacation. Simply going on the show is seen as being complicit with the left. And now MAGA is literally calling for his cancellation and deriding him over a rather harmless, Nerf-pointed late night talk show joke, and accusing Jelly Roll of “fat shaming” the President. Wait, wasn’t it the left that couldn’t take a joke, was too “politically correct,” and making too much of body image?

And yet someone through all this incessant online hatred and backlash, the kill shot that is the video of Jelly Roll saying the N-word three times—and two years after an entire scandal was launched in country for Morgan Wallen that is still raging to this very day—the incident has gone entirely unreported in perhaps the biggest media scandal in modern country history. The left media apparatchiks didn’t want to report on it when it first broke, because they were still hoping Jelly Roll would be their water carrier. And those on the right didn’t care and claimed they were against “cancellation” … until he made a harmless joke about Trump of course.

The truth is, Jelly Roll’s popularity and fame were always propped up by a fictitious, media-driven narrative. Everyone bought into it, from Jon Caramanica at The New York Times, to the talking heads at Fox News. Now, all that’s left is the muscle memory of “Oh, but everybody likes Jelly Roll” by some out-of-touch boomer decision makers who should have been more aware when they booked him for Jimmy Kimmel Live! But then again, just like Jelly Roll, the late night talk show circuit is pretty much cold product too. Is anyone really left watching this stuff, especially in real-time?

And amid all of this, Jelly Roll does feel like he is on a very personal journey to better himself, trying to move on and atone for his felonious past, find peace and redemption through Christianity, and even lose weight. He’s also probably smart to distance from Bunny XO on a personal level. He’s definitely smart to take a year off of touring, if not more to reset, and probably should have side stepped the Kimmel gig to get out of the spotlight for a bit. Now he’s back in it in the worst of ways.

Meanwhile, Jelly Roll’s recent catalog is a mess of Christian rock and corporate country rap/nu-metal that nobody ever really loved and that won’t age well. And despite the story of the actual man and whatever underlying truth there is to it, the way the media reported on Jelly Roll was so performative and from one side without scrutiny, it makes it all feel so phony now.

The rise and fall of Jelly Roll should really be a lesson to a lot of folks in the entertainment industry who believe a persona can be propped up by media and paid influencers. People sense when something is getting shoved down their throats. They’re feeling that same thing right now with Stella Lefty, despite her popularity through “Boston.” And the more the media tries to push the boiler plate narrative pushed by the industry, the more speculative the public becomes. Because they feel fooled by Jelly Roll, and so many others.

Since fame is so often bought and paid for these days, the public doesn’t trust anything, and is quick to turn on it. And that lack of integrity looks to undermine the entire music industry, just like it’s undermined the career arc of Jelly Roll.

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