Jelly Roll has released his first song since filing for divorce from Bunnie Xo after nearly 10 years of marriage.
“Everybody get your hands up / Evеrybody put your hands up / If you ain’t perfect but you try / Put ‘em way up to the sky / Touchin’ heaven kinda high / Ain’t that where we wanna go when we die / Whoa, whoa, whoa / Just put your hands up / Everybody put your hands up,” Jelly Roll, 41, sings in his track “Hands Up,” which was released on Wednesday, June 24.
Ahead of the song’s release, Jelly Roll (real name Jason Bradley DeFord) teased the anthem via his Instagram while reflecting on his weight-loss journey.
“On day 1, I walked in the rain,” Jelly Roll wrote over a throwback video of him walking in a driveway with his hands on his hips as he sported a rain coat.
The video then showed a clip of Jelly Roll explaining, “Everytime I said I was going to lose the weight, I lied to myself. I would tell myself, ‘I’m going to do this. I’m going to go do that.’ And then I’d go tell my family that. There’s a big person listening to this right now or a drug addict or somebody who wants to change some part of their life, who right now is going, ‘I’m going to start next Monday.’ That first Monday comes, it is pissing rain. Cats and dogs, dude. And I wake up and I’m like, ‘S***.’”
He continued, “My daughter was like, ‘Just wait ‘til the rain quits and do it on the treadmill or something.’ But in my mind, I was like, ‘No I’m going outside, you know. I’m done lying to y’all and I’m done lying to me. I told y’all I was going to do this walk, I’m going to do this walk.’”
A clip then played of Jelly Roll continuing his walk from that first day, before transitioning to him running through the street now in the rain. In the video, Jelly Roll lifted his hands in the air as he ran.
“Today, I’m sprinting in the rain,” he wrote over the clip. “Because one day, not that long ago, I stopped lying to myself. I barely made it up my driveway that day. I’m alive today because I didn’t lose faith. F*** Monday. Start today. ‘Hands up’ out at midnight.”
“Make the choice. You can do it. ‘Hands Up’ out at midnight,” he captioned the Tuesday, June 23, post.
Days prior to Jelly Roll’s song, news broke that he filed for divorce from Bunnie Xo, 46, and listed their date of separation as May 9. He also cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their split.
Jelly Roll and Bunnie Xo (real name Alyssa DeFord) have both spoken publicly about their divorce since the filing. Jelly Roll, for his part, addressed his marital status at his Saratoga Springs, New York tour leg on Thursday, June 18.
“Nobody cheated on nobody. She just did a whole podcast about it. You can go watch it. Every word of it is the truth,” he said at the time, referring to her “Dumb Blonde” podcast. “That will be my best friend forever. This is the only time I will ever speak about it. Bunnie, I love you baby. Thank you for those 10 years. They were incredible. Thank you for the next 10 years of friendship and 20 beyond that.”
