From nervously talking a mile per second to seeing Eminem opening to him emotionally on the music video set, Jelly Roll experienced the most surreal moment of his career when collaborating with Marshall.
The Nashville artist spoke at length about the personal connection he felt to Eminem’s music, comparing their joint track to some of Slim Shady’s most introspective work, like “Mockingbird” and “Stan”.
Jelly Roll, who has long idolised Eminem, reflected on the significance of receiving a track from one of his musical heroes:
It’s by far the most unreal thing that’s happened in my career yet. There are probably five people on Earth I’d meet that I would be jittery around. It’d be G Brooks, James Taylor, Bob Seger, and Eminem. People I grew up knowing every word of every song they’ve ever released.
When the track arrived, Jelly Roll was immediately reminded of Eminem’s earlier works, especially the personal depth that defined albums like The Eminem Show:
When he sent the record over and I got to hear it the first time, it reminded me of ‘Mockingbird.’ It reminded me of “The Eminem Show”, that era of him. The rest of the album felt like earlier Slim Shady, but these couple of songs, this and “Temporary” with my friend Skylar Grey, they felt really nostalgic, like deep Eminem, like “Stan” Eminem. Like Eminem, that made you feel like you were in his living room with him — you knew his daughter, you knew the family struggles, you knew what he was going through, you felt it.
For Jelly Roll, this emotional connection between their songs was powerful:
For that to be combined with the song that I think was my version of that… I feel like “Save Me” is kind of a peek into my soul. It’s like it was a look into my soul. It was a song that I wrote with a friend of mine from high school. For that to be the song that brought us together… I think it was so serendipitous. It was maybe even divine.
One of the most moving moments came when Eminem shared a personal video during the making of the music video:
People don’t know this, but he showed it to me when we were sitting backstage for the video. That camcorder footage is authentic, that’s not a fix. That wasn’t a made-up thing. He had years of this old footage from his drug addiction years that he had never even really properly gone through, just because he knew it was from those years. And like somewhere in the process of the album… he had either seen that video the day that he had written “Somebody Save Me” or a couple of days after. It’s really deep, man.
Reflecting on his time with Eminem, Jelly Roll shared how they spent hours together on set, and he appreciated the chance to bond with the rap legend:
We spent a lot of time on that video set really hanging. That dude got really deep with me, and he’s a great guy. I’m glad I got a second time to hang out with him ’cause the first time, I completely made a fool of myself.
Jelly Roll admitted his nerves got the better of him initially:
I did the nervous “talk your face off” kind of thing. “I went to high school in Antioch, I’m from Nashville, Tennessee. My daughter’s 16”… I was just barraging him with everything. He’s not as talkative as me, in general. So, he was kind of quiet, and we were just meeting each other, and every time it got quiet, I just started spitting fun facts about me. Like, “I wear a size 13 shoe, I like Jordans too”. Just yelling out random things. I had to apologise mid doing it, like, “Man, I’m nervous”. He’s like, “It’s all good, dude”.
From bonding over deep conversations on set to battling nerves during their first meeting, Jelly Roll’s admiration for Eminem shines through, culminating in a collaboration he described as “divine” and emotionally resonant. It is another full-circle moment for an artist who grew up feeling an emotional connection to Eminem’s music and then met the man and felt that every word he believed before was true.
Watch the video below:
