Jason Bradley Deford, a/k/a “Jelly Roll” – IOTW Report

Jason Bradley Deford, a/k/a “Jelly Roll”

Monday, 29 January 2024, 22:03 Dr. Tar Uncategorized 14

Jason Bradley Deford, a/k/a “Jelly Roll” has been around the music scene in Memphis for a decade or two on the outskirts of hip hop nation. Then he transitioned to “country rock” and scored this hit last year.

I don’t know how I missed this one, but I’m glad I found it. Watch

Mr. Deford testified before a Senate committee on a fentanyl bill. Nice to see a performer put his notoriety to a good use. Here

14 Comments on Jason Bradley Deford, a/k/a “Jelly Roll”

  8. Look, I don’t like drug dealers. I’ve made that very clear here. I spent my youth dodging their hooks, years cleaning up their wreckage, dealt with and am still dealing with friends and family members in their thrall, seen cities wrecked by their garbage, dealt with the results of their internecine battles. I have said in this space they are the worst sort of scum, worthy only of death and damnation in the blackest pits of hell, and meant it.

    Then you show me a face-tattooed rapper of all things, a guy I only vaguely heard of and remember because of a stupid name, who is testifying at the DC Clown College about Fentanyl. This ought to be rich.

    By the grace of God, not man. – Dr. Tar

    Then I click the testimony.

    And without this being his intention at all, Mr. Deford proceeds to thoroughly school me on the fact that, by the grace of God, repentance and redemption are part of His plan, and that He can touch even such a one as this to realize and revile the very thing he once so callously promoted, and to work to atone for the damage he’s acknowledged he’s done, and to advise on how to ameliorate the damage his ilk wreaks on the world still, which he knows well from his former life.

    His
    FORMER
    life.

    …he didn’t back away from what he was. He acknowledged the pain he caused, unlike some folks I knew who blamed the drugs, the streets, their parents, their friends, bla bla etc, usw. and so forth.

    Nope, he just lays it our there;

    “He said: “I brought my community down. I hurt people. I was 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.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/13/jelly-roll-anti-fentanyl-bill-congress

    …and, nakedly, this…

    ““I was a part of the problem,” DeFord said to the Senate committee, who also heard from two law enforcement officials Thursday as the act’s chances of final congressional passage remained unclear. “I am here now, standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution.”

    I was part of the problem.

    So now I want to use my unique perspective and the platform of my fame to atone what little I can to become part of the solution.

    And I can’t argue with that, take away from the sincerity I hear in his voice as he describes the hell the crap he used to peddle wreaked in the lives of those he loves and gives him fear for them here,now, today.

    And whether I want to or not, this forces me to look at my own self and acknowledge that with God all things are possible, that even a vile drug dealer can come to Jesus, that Jesus WANTS the vile drug dealer to come to Him, and that His Blood can and WILL cleanse the sin from even such a one as that, if he truly acknowledges and truly repents his sins.

    And that’s tough for ME, who wants drug dealers to literally go to hell for the things I’ve seen and the lives I know they ruined.

    But God wants them back.

    And God can GET them back.

    And that God can USE them to His purposes as He can use even a sinner such as me.

    It’s something of a bitter pill to swallow for me, but the bitterness in it was added by no one but myself.

    God wants them back.

    …I do not stand in God’s place. I can’t tell you on this brief contact if this guy is sincere or if it’s an act, if he’s going to Heaven or hell, if he’s saved or shamming. I’m no one to judge on my own merits at all.

    But the discernment of the Spirit seems to be whispering that this is no act.

    I went a bit further though. I listened to Brad’s link to “Need A Favor”, where he contemplates that God owes him nothing for the way he comes to God only when he needs something, but realizes that he needs God despite the way he’s at a loss when its time to speak to Him. I then went to “Son of a Sinner”, where he describes having been lost on the backroads of sin, describes the lies he lived there, and says he’s trying to put them behind him and drive a literal Highway to Heaven, but acknowledges the devil reaches for him still even as God calls to him;

    “‘Cause I’m only one drink away from the devil
    I’m only one call away from home”

    …he seems inelegant and unschooled in the Bible, but seems to be coming from a sincere place where he knows that he needs the Lord to save him.

    And I cannot hate or deny that.

    I know too little of this man, having just basically met him today, to know if I’m being conned or not. Despite my cynicism I am very gullible when it comes to people claiming to be saved, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find in one year or ten that I was played by a dirty drug dealer and so be given another reason to hate them.

    But somehow I don’t think so.

    With God all things are possible.

    Even a drug dealer truly, literally coming to Jesus.

    Even I, who has wished nothing but damnation for them in the past, wishing salvation for this man in the present.

    So now I can only say something I never thought I would say to a drug dealer, a purveyor of misery, a profiteer in human suffering;;

    God Bless you, Jason Bradley DeFord.

    May you be a light to others to come from the darkness you have left behind, to also repent and come to Him.

    And may we count as a blessing every life not destroyed by every dealer like you who finds Him and quits poisoning his fellow man.

    And may you prove everything I’ve said about the irredeemablilty of drug dealers to be wrong.

    “This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.”
    Acts 4:11

    God Bless,
    SNS

    11

  11. God has to win over the head first before he can transform the heart and then use the hands to serve his kingdom.

    Until we learn to confess our sins with our lips…

    Praise be to you O Lord…

    4

  12. Most of the people that God uses are truly broken people who know they need a savior. They’ve been to Hell and back and know that God saved them out of the pit of destruction. I’ve very rarely seen or heard of God using a so-called goody two shoes type golden boy to spread the truth of the gospel. Most of these types are phonies who are in it for their own benefit. Remember that Saul was one of these, bigger and more handsome and stronger than everyone else but flawed so much so that the prophet Samuel had to call him out because his heart was not after God’s but his own wicked desires to be the King of Israel. And God replaced Saul with David who was a runty kid and even though flawed and an adulterer and a murderer was a man after God’s heart, repenting of his wicked deeds. “Create in me a clean heart oh God and renew a right spirit within me…”, was one of his prayers that God answered when David acknowledged God and confessed his sins something that Saul could never do because of his pride and his arrogance which led to his downfall. I know that I needed a savior who has been with me all of my nearly 71 years now thru the good and the bad and the ups and downs and who saved me when I was 19 back in 1972. I don’t even want to know what my life would’ve been without God; all I know is it wouldn’t have been as good and full of his grace and mercy and blessing as I have experienced over the past 52 years. Thank God that he saved a wretch like me. And he can do it for anybody who acknowledges God as their Lord and savior.

    3

  14. No one ever is a lost cause; God has given us free will to choose life or death. I’m glad that I chose life because without God I would’ve more than likely been a lost cause. God saves the ninety and nine but always holds out hope for that one last person who might be a lost cause. God doesn’t want anyone to be a lost cause and he gives us more chances than we’ll ever know to seek him and his ways, even if we don’t know it or see it. God is always there in our midst no matter what we go thru in life. It’s the way of totally undeserved lavish grace and mercy which God bestows on all humanity. God never gives up on us, we are the ones to choose to give up and lose hope in God to our eternal peril.

    3

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