The road to success is hardly ever a linear path. Sometimes, we have to learn lessons the hard way. Jelly Roll knows this well, making tons of mistakes in his past. However, now, he wants to atone for them.
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Recently, Jelly Roll sits down for a deeply personal interview on the On Purpose With Jay Shetty podcast. There, he gets candid about the people he robbed over weed as a teen. The court charges him for aggravated robbery as an adult and faces a 20 year sentence at the time. However, luck or God was on his side that day. Ultimately, the I Need a Favor crooner serves over a year for the charge, with over seven years in probation afterwards.
Now, Jelly Roll just wishes he could reach out and speak with the people he hurt. "I really want to have a conversation with them. I've thought about reaching out. This has been 24 years ago now, I just don't know how that would even start, or, 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," he explains. "I was 15, dude, you know what I mean? I couldn't grow facial hair at all, I hardly hit puberty, I still had my high voice when I did that robbery. So, I've thought about that a ton and they're definitely on my list."
Jelly Roll Wants to Apologize to The Victims He Robbed As a Teenager
Jelly Roll looks back on that time with shame and hopes that he can be forgiven if he has the opportunity. "I had no business taking from anybody," the country titan explains. "Just the entitlement that I had, that the world owed me enough that I could come take your stuff. It's just what a horrible, horrible way to look at life and people. What a horrible way to interact with the Earth."
Additionally, Jelly Roll ruminates on the kind of person he was back as a teenager. Sure, he gives himself a little bit of leeway because he was a child. But he doesn't relate much to that person anymore. I look back at those years, and I'm so embarrassed to talk about them," he admits "I was still a bad person in my early thirties, but I mean, I was a really horrible kid all the way into my mid-twenties. People are always like, you're the nicest dude I've ever met. I'm like, I'm so glad y'all haven't met nobody that knew me 20 years ago."
