Jelly Roll Shows Off Nearly 300-Pound Weight Loss
The rapper looked trimmer than ever on the red carpet.
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All eyes were on rapper Jelly Roll, 41, as he showed off his nearly 300-pound weight loss at last night’s Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
The increasingly trim musician, whose real name is Jason Bradley DeFord, scooped up three awards at the ceremony: Best Contemporary Country Album for his 2024 album Beautifully Broken; Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song for “Hard Fought Hallelujah” with Brandon Lake; and Best Country Duo/Group Performance for “Amen” with Shaboozey.
Equally as impressive as his plethora of awards was the rapper’s remarkable weight loss.
Jelly Roll attends the 68th Grammy Awards on February 1, 2026.
Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The
The Nashville native looked jaw-droppingly different than his previous appearance at the ceremony in 2024.
On left, Jelly Roll at the 66th Grammy Awards on February 4, 2024, prior to his drastic weight-loss transformation; on right, Jelly Roll at the 2026 Grammy Awards.
The Daily Beast/Getty
In a post-Grammys interview, Jelly Roll thanked fans for believing in him from day one, well before his now-viral weight loss.
“I want y’all to know that first of all, we did it, baby,” he said. “This would have never happened without them, man. Imagine that. Imagine being one of the few people in the world from the very beginning that believed in this overweight white trash kid from Tennessee that he was going to figure it out one day.”
Jelly Roll won three Grammys at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards on February 1, 2026.
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When asked to comment on politics, as many musicians did at the 2026 Grammy Awards, Jelly Roll promised to make a more explicit statement on his stance in the near future.
“I have a lot to say about it. And I’m going to in the next week and everybody’s going to hear exactly what I have to say about it in the most loud and clear way I’ve ever spoken in my life. So I look forward to it,” he told the interviewer.
Jelly Roll in 2023 and 2025.
Getty
Jelly Roll previously weighed 520 pounds. He spoke to Men’s Health magazine last month about losing 275 pounds without using GLP-1 medications.
Instead, he worked with several health advisors, including a medical team, a chef, and a sports nutritionist. The musician went on to drop nearly 300 pounds by focusing on meal timing, eating real foods, staying active, and managing stress. With this regimen in place, the rapper estimated he was losing around nine to 15 pounds a month.
The rapper also said that treating his food addiction like any other addiction was key to his weight-loss success. He is in recovery for codeine and cocaine addiction.
“I didn’t look at the food addiction different,” he told the outlet. “Once I started treating food like an addiction, it started changing everything for me.”
