NEWS
Jelly Roll has been enjoying huge success as a crossover act for the past year or so, but it might never have happened had it not been for some words of encouragement from Lil Wyte.
The multi-genre phenomenon (real name Jason DeFord) who started out as a rapper in Tennessee’s underground Hip Hop scene broke the record for longest reign on Billboard‘s Emerging Artist chart earlier this month. Topping the chart for a record-breaking 25 weeks, he took the title from NLE Choppa who originally set the record with a 24-week run at the top of the chart in 2019 and 2020.
Helping Jelly Roll to achieve this feat were his country/rock-leaning singles “Dead Man Walking,” “She,” “Need a Favor,” and “Son of the Dirty South.” However, his biggest record is the heartfelt and vulnerable “Son of a Sinner,” which became his first chart-topper on the Country Airplay chart last month.
Although the majority of his success is a result of his towering, fervor-stricken vocals, Jelly Roll wasn’t a fan of his singing voice when he first started to experiment with it on record.
It wasn’t until Three 6 Mafia affiliate Lil Wyte pointed out how good it was during recording sessions for Year Round, the 2011 Hypnotize Minds album the pair put out as SNO — a trio of white rappers which also included the late BPZ, who passed away in 2022 — that he began to feel more comfortable with it.
“I had this big record on [Year Round] called ‘Pain No More’ that I wrote in jail,” Jelly Roll explained to HipHopDX. “When I came home it was one of my go-to songs. The first studio session I had with [Three 6 Mafia’s DJ] Paul and them, they were like, ‘What have you got from jail?’ I had this big stack of raps but they wanted to know if I had any songs; I sang that one.”
It was then that Wyte turned to Jelly Roll, blown away by what he had just heard, and told him that he should keep heading in that direction with his art.
“I’ll never forget Wyte looking at me and going: ‘That’s what you need to do,'” Jelly Roll recalled. “I didn’t think I sounded good. I was so self-conscious of it and was like, ‘Nah, I’m not a singer, I’m a rapper.’
“Wyte was one of the first guys that would point back at all these other records where I was singing choruses. ‘You’re singing right here, though. You’re singing right here.’ And I was like, ‘No, I’m just kinda harmonizing.’ I didn’t know anything about music so I was like, ‘Nah, I’m just harmonizing.’ Now I know what a harmony is and it’s the opposite of what I was doing.”
He continued: “I think I then started tinkering with it and started getting more and more comfortable with it as the years went on. It’s just like anything else, the more I did it, the better I felt about it. After the SNO album, I started putting one song with me singing on every album.”
For years Jelly Roll continued to pepper his albums with the occasional singing track. It was his 2020 track “Save Me” that proved to be the “big turning point,” when he decided he was going to go all in and release more songs with him singing.
Jelly Roll and Lil Wyte have known each other for years. Prior to teaming up for SNO, the pair had been booked for some the same shows and hung out a few times. “We were cool but we weren’t what we are now,” Jelly Roll told DX. “To this day, Wyte is one of my best friends.”
Their journey to brotherhood began after Wyte reached out to Jelly upon his release from jail in 2009, after he uploaded his “10 Minute Freestyle” to YouTube.
“I had just got out of jail, and I had put up the ’10 Minute Freestyle’ on YouTube and Wyte was the first person to call me,” Jelly Roll remembered. “He was like, ‘You’re home?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m home.’ He was like, ‘I’m driving up to Nashville right now. I’m starting my own record label with [DJ] Paul and Juicy [J]’s blessing; they’re producing my new album. I wanna help, like immediately.’ And this was when Wyte was on fire.
“So he came up to Nashville and he sat down and was like, ‘Yo, look man, Paul and Juice are in a place now where they’re kinda moving on, they’re getting into other ventures; so they let me have autonomy but with their backing still. So I’m gonna start my own label and put out my own projects.”
He continued: “Paul and Juice wanna do this record called SNO. Project Pat’s got an artist named BPZ — by the way, rest in peace BPZ. He passed away last year — He said, ‘This is how they wanna start it and then I wanna work with you,’ and I was like, ‘Dope.'”
Once Wyte got to Nashville the pair went straight to the studio and recorded their ‘Pop Another Pill’ collaboration. Wyte also hopped on “Hand to the Sky,” a record Jelly had done with Jackson, Mississippi rapper Fat Boy, which ended up on Wyte’s Cocaine & Kush 2 compilation.
“We were just rotating,” Jelly Roll said of his collaborative efforts with Wyte. “I ended up moving down to Memphis and we ended up touring together, and I lived with him in Cordova for probably two years.”
In addition to SNO, Jelly Roll and Lil Wyte also put out two joint albums: No Filter (2013) and No Filter 2 (2016).
Working with Three 6 Mafia was a full circle moment for Jelly Roll. Growing up in Nashville, he would listen to all the Memphis mixtapes making their way into the city, by way of his big brother, many of which were by Triple Six.
“We would get all the Memphis mixtapes and the Nashville rap mixtapes,” he explained. “So like Pistol, Haystak, Kool Daddy Fresh, Quanie Cash, they were kinda the big rappers here in Nashville. And then Three 6 Mafia, 8Ball & MJG and Yo Gotti were the big rappers out of Memphis.
“[Street Flavor Records founder] Sonny Paradise and Haystak was getting distribution through Select-O-Hits; so we’d go down to Select-O in Memphis and get all the Underground Kingpin Skinny Pimp shit — all the shit that wasn’t even making it out of Memphis yet. Then I got into Houston rap shortly thereafter and that was the beginnings of the pillars of my sound.”
Asked about his time spent with Three 6 Mafia, Jelly Roll didn’t want to divulge too much about their fabled madcap antics, but he did admit to having some of the “wildest nights” of his life with the legendary Memphis collective.
“Keep in mind we were with ’em right at the peak of like, winning the Oscar. It was — they would takeover bars, like literally,” he said. “They would turn a bar into their living room, anywhere they went. I think that depicts it the best.”
Just days after landing her fourth No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Drop Dead,” Olivia Rodrigo is now getting major recognition from Niall Horan.
In a recent conversation with Rolling Stone published April 30, the former One Direction member shared insight into how he approaches songwriting, highlighting the comeback of bridges in pop and pointing to Rodrigo as a key influence behind it.
“It’s great to hear [bridges]. I feel like Olivia Rodrigo has been a big influence on that for pop writers,” the Irish artist said, before singing part of the “Drivers License” bridge. “What I like about Olivia’s music is [that] you feel like you’re getting one song and then you get a completely different song. It completely flips on its head musically, goes somewhere different, brings you to a bridge, brings you to some weird musical breakdown thing. Whatever [she] and Dan Nigro are up to is a good little team they’ve got going there. It’s definitely influencing people, including myself.”
Horan also spoke at length about his upcoming project Dinner Party, set to arrive June 5 through Capitol Records. He has already released two tracks from the record, including the title cut and “Little More Time,” both produced alongside Afterhrs, John Ryan and Julian Bunetta. The album rollout will be paired with an extensive 22-date tour across Europe, Ireland and the U.K. The Irish singer’s new release follows 2023’s The Show, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. During the interview, Horan also mentioned that his next era leans more into rock elements, something he connects back to his long-standing love for bands like Blink-182.
“That drum sound is something that we were trying to chase, and that comes from that late-’90s, early-2000s punk-rock era,” he said. “Rock’s been a big influence in my life since I was a child. I write pop songs, but dressing them up in a different way sometimes is quite cool. And now, the way my career is going, I’m completely thinking about live shows all the time. I learned so much from being on the road and being out there every night. There’s only so much sitting on Spotify you can do and reading comments before you actually get an idea of what people actually think. You can see it in the room. The rockier stuff really goes off at the shows.”
The “Slow Hands” hitmaker also has two U.S. stadium dates lined up for this year. Joining longtime friend and Grammy-nominated country artist Thomas Rhett, Horan is set to perform at GEODIS Park in Nashville on July 9 and Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania on July 19, with Live Nation handling promotion for both shows. Kashus Culpepper and Emily Ann Roberts will open the concerts. With such a packed touring schedule, all four remaining members of One Direction are expected to be on the road with new music this year. When asked about attending his former bandmates’ shows, Horan gave praise to Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson.
“I went to Harry’s show a couple of years ago, and that was just wild. Madness going on there,” he said. “It reminded me of the 1D stadium shows where it was just seas of people jumping up and down. Watching the things going on on the floor, all the fans dancing around, I love that. You feel a sense of pride watching the boys doing what they love to do, and the communities that they’re able to create. I’m going to try and get to a Louis show of some capacity in the next few weeks.”
Horan is now the fourth One Direction member to drop a new album this year. Tomlinson released How Did I Get Here? in January, Styles hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally in March, and ZAYN followed with Konnakol earlier this month on April 17.
