Country star Jelly Roll is facing criticism after he attempted to avoid a question from a reporter about ICE after Sunday's Grammy Awards by claiming he's just a "dumb redneck."
The singer—whose real name is Jason Bradley DeFord—earned three awards on Sunday, winning Best Country Duo/Group Performance with Shaboozey, Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song with Brandon Lake, and Best Contemporary Country Album for his tenth studio album, Beautifully Broken.
He was asked for his thoughts on the state of the country amid President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and as outrage grows around the country following the murders of Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE agents.
He replied:
“People shouldn’t care to hear my opinion, man. I’m a dumb redneck. I haven’t watched enough. I didn’t have a phone for 18 months. I’ve had one for four months and don’t have social media. I hate to be the artist that’s that aloof, I’m just so disconnected from what’s happening.”
“I grew up in a house of like insane pandemonium. I didn’t even know politics were fucking real until I was in my mid-20s in jail. When you grow up in a drug addict household, you think we have, like, common calls about what’s happening in world politics? We’re just trying to find a way to survive, man.”
You can hear what he said in the video below.
But that explanation doesn't fly because he has actually been photographed meeting Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAGA singer Kid Rock, and Donald Trump Jr., among others.
Here are the receipts.
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For someone who claims to not know much about politics, Jelly Roll appears to have conveniently forgotten the time he testified before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on the fentanyl crisis.
The singer, who was arrested several times and spent time in jail for various charges and felonies including possession with intent to distribute and aggravated robbery, said he was once "the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about, just like these drug dealers are doing right now when they're mixing every drug on the market with fentanyl and they're killing the people we love."
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He was swiftly called out.
Jelly Roll's flaky response stands in stark contrast to that of singer Billie Eilish, who said she feels "like we need to just keep fighting and speaking up and protesting" and declared "F**k ICE" when she received the Grammy Award for "Song of the Year" with her brother Finneas O'Connell for their work on the song "Wildflower."
Rapper Bad Bunny—who collected three awards Sunday, including a landmark album of the year win for Debí Tirar Más Fotos—dedicated his win to “all the people who had to leave their homeland, their country to follow their dreams" and said "ICE Out!" to cheers from the audience.
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