Two Nashville-born artists, Ernest and Jelly Roll, are teaming up for a humorous new song about their different life paths. Ernest shared a snippet of the song to social media earlier this week (Feb. 12), which finds the two singers trading lines about their past. In the opening lines, Ernest sings "I went to college" and Jelly Roll follows that up with "And I went to jail." They continue singing about their contrasting life stories in the chorus.
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"I went to college / I went to jail / One was a dorm room / One was a cell / Who came out on top, hell, it's hard to tell / I went to college / And I went to jail."
The song continues into the second verse, as they sing about growing up in the Nashville area, but having "two different lives." The tune also makes reference to Jelly Roll's breakout hit, "Son of a Sinner," which Ernest co-wrote, and it recounts how the two artists met: at a party "over big bags of weed." Listen here.
As it turns out, the upcoming song is a true story, and it came out of a golf course conversation between Ernest and Luke Bryan. Ernest recalled the story on an episode of Theo Von's "This Past Weekend" podcast from December, which also featured Jelly Roll.
During the conversation with Bryan, Ernest talked about how he goes "way back" with Jelly Roll. He says the two used to get together to "freestyle rap" in 2010. However, things soon changed for the duo.
"Then I went to college, and he went to jail, and then we came back around all these years later," Ernest recalled of the conversation.
Apparently, Bryan then stopped Ernest and said they need to write that song. The two then began writing the song on the golf course while Facetiming Jelly Roll for his input.
Jelly Roll is no stranger to talking about his incarcerated past. In fact, he has even visited his old jail cell and played for inmates many times.
Ernest has yet to share when the official version of the duet will be released.
