As honest as it gets.
Jelly Roll released his Beautifully Broken album last week, and he’s been doing tons of press in the lead-up to, and since, putting it out, talking about the music, as well as his personal life.
And on the Jay Shetty Podcast, he revealed a lot about himself and his old habits, and I’m sure many people have heard his story since his rise to country stardom and how he was in and out of juvenile detention and arrested many times before he really pursued a career in music.
He actually met his wife, podcaster BunnieXO, in 2015 when he was in Las Vegas performing a concert. He was actually homeless at the time and living in a van, though the two hit it off instantly and have been together ever since.
Before her, though, Jelly admitted that he was unfaithful and usually juggling multiple women at a time. He explained that he found validation in pulling “pretty women,” because it made him feel like he “wasn’t fat.” It’s pretty dang candid and something most people, especially men, would never dream of admitting to anyone, much less millions of people…
“I’ve done so many interviews and never talked about this. I was so insecure in my body for so many years, that I found validation through women. And I thought that if I could pull pretty women, then I wasn’t fat, you know what I mean?
And it was just something else. And because of that, I had a really, really bad relationship with women, multiple women all the time… as many partners as I could get, living, double, triple, quadruple lives, relationships with all these people.
The first thing that happened was, when I got with Bunnie, it was something that just happened where immediately, I didn’t want to talk to nobody. I just wanted to be with her.”
Obviously, meeting Bunnie changed his life in so many ways, and clearly he’s found a new purpose and sense of self because of their relationship:
“And somebody used to tell me that anybody who has ever built an empire, a modern era, it was always a one woman man. Because when you focus on one woman and one woman focuses on you, and y’all focus on building together… it’s amazing what happens.
So it’s crazy, Jay, just what happened the day I was like, this is all that matters. It’s just me and you and building this thing together.”
Jelly Roll also told Jay about how, when he met Bunnie, he was in the midst of fighting for custody of his daughter Bailee, and it didn’t scare Bunnie off one bit… in fact, she told him he was special from the beginning, and helped him get an apartment and eventually get full custody.
He acknowledged that they were both still broken people at the time, but have grown together over the years and have been together for eight years now.
It came down to the fact that he knew he didn’t want to lose her from the get go, and she was the first women he ever had “a healthy amount of fear of”:
“She was the first woman, and I know people are gonna say this ain’t right, but she was the first woman I had a healthy amount of fear of. I’ve never been afraid of losing something before, ever, never.”
It’s a really raw and honest interview, and worth your time to check out because of that:
I’ll leave the full episode here if you’re interested:
