Jelly Roll Gets Brutally Honest About His Face Tattoos: “I Was A Small, Insecure Human”

Opening up about what comes with his ink.

Jelly Roll is not your conventional-looking country star. With a history in the correctional system, Jelly Roll has transformed his life for the better, successfully escaped his life of crime to become a family man, and made his dream of becoming a singer come true. When Jelly Roll first stepped onto the country music scene, he was an outcast by looks alone. Jelly Roll was at his heaviest when he became famous, covered in tattoos (including on his face), and had a larger-than-life personality, quickly becoming known for his preacher-like acceptance speeches.

While Jelly Roll has fully transformed in front of our eyes over the last two years through his incredible weight-loss journey, his tattoos still represent the man he used to be. Jelly Roll has previously opened up that he does not like many of his tattoos, admitting to GQ:

“I regret 98% of these tattoos. 97%… almost all of them. Like core philosophies I rooted my life in when I was 17…now I’m 40. I’m like, ‘What the **** was I thinking?’”

So what led Jelly Roll to ink himself up? Was it a call for attention? In a recent cover story with Men’s Health, Jelly Roll said that his decision to cover himself and his face with tattoos was the furthest thing from an attention grab.

“The way shame sometimes shows itself is not always the way we expect it to be. We think shame is somebody in the streets on their knees, with their head down. But shame sometimes is pride. 

Behind real bravado, I can normally find shame. I can normally find guilt. I can normally find insecurity. I was the biggest, the loudest, the toughest, the meanest, the growliest, the fattest.”

The “Highway To Hell” singer added that behind the image he had created for himself was a very small human inside, leading him to make all these choices to cover his insecurities.

“I was that, for sure. Then a by-product of that was I got fat as f***.”

And even though Jelly Roll has grown out of the insecure man that he once was, there were still moments of insecurity that crept into his life, especially being the father. It’s not hard to imagine that some parents might not want their kids to play with another kid if their father looks like that.

According to his article in Men’s Health, Jelly Roll might remove his face tattoos one day, furthering his transformation journey.

Ironically, because of Jelly Roll’s weight loss, some of his face tattoos have changed shape due to extra skin, leading some fans to theorize that the version of Jelly we see today is a “clone.”

View this post on Instagram

That, combined with the shocking look of Jelly Roll shaving his facial hair for the first time in over a decade, led his wife, Bunnie Xo, to respond to all these “clone” comments.

“When people think your husband is a clone because he lost weight and his ‘tattoos don’t match.’”

She wrote on the video’s on-screen caption, reminding people in the post’s caption that his metamorphosis did not happen overnight:

“Btw, it took him TWO years to lose this weight, not two weeks.”

Amen to that. If Jelly Roll decides to remove his face tattoos down the line, I can only imagine what “clone” theories will arise…

@xomgitsbunnie Btw it took him TWO years to lose this weight, not two weeks #jellyandbunnie ♬ original sound – OutofContextFamilyGuy

The post Jelly Roll Gets Brutally Honest About His Face Tattoos: “I Was A Small, Insecure Human” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.