Jelly Roll feels so force fed. It’s like it’s something the music industry just aggressively assigned to us—like a focus-grouped product, not someone we discovered organically. I genuinely wonder how someone lands that role—the guy who bypasses the grind of building a fanbase and honing his sound, and instead gets catapulted into every radio format, streaming playlist, and pop culture show like it’s a done deal. It’s honestly kind of infuriating that we didn’t get to make this choice and they just made it for us. I avoid mainstream music and tv quite a bit, yet I still feel exhausted by the dude. It’s like the industry said, “Let’s cook up a slightly more hillbilly Post Malone who can check the pop, rock, country and hip-hop boxes, and then just force-feed him to the masses whether it sticks or not. We’ll make it stick. Why? Why him? What the fuck did he do to deserve so much industry support? Where the hell did he even come from?
