What To Know About Jelly Roll's Three Half-Siblings

Jelly Roll has often discussed having a rough childhood, particularly after his parents divorced and he remained at home with his mother, who struggled with addiction and mental health issues. Rarer are conversations about Jelly Roll's half-siblings, despite the fact that he appears to be close with them. Jelly has three siblings through his father, Horace "Buddy" DeFord  (the singer's real name is Jason DeFord), all of them older. While his two half-brothers have been featured on his socials and in his documentary, "Jelly Roll: Save Me," there isn't too much information about them on the internet. Little is known about the singer's sister outside of the basics, like her last name and marital status.

Many people have assumed Jelly Roll's siblings are in the music industry, since he refers to plenty of his singer friends as "brothers" or "sisters" in social media posts and interviews. In fact, the star is quite loose with the family terminology and has labeled dozens with these terms. In terms of his biological siblings, however, fans have to dig deep to find the tea. That said, enough hints have been dropped that we have a basic picture of who each of them is and what their relationship with their famous half-brother looks like. Here's what you need to know about Jelly Roll's half-brothers, Roger and Scott, and his half-sister Shelby.

Born in 1984, Jelly Roll is the only child of Buddy and Donna DeFord. Buddy's three other kids preceded their relationship, and none of them lived with the singer while he was growing up in Antioch, Tennessee. A childhood photo Jelly posted to Instagram in 2020 features Roger and Scott, who appear to be at minimum a decade older than him. But the age difference didn't stop Jelly from developing a connection to his siblings. In the post, Jelly Roll said he was "still really close with" both of his older brothers. This is also clear from photos, including some from a 2019 family vacation where Jelly Roll and his brothers drank tequila on the beach.

"One thing I pride myself on is being rooted in family," Jelly Roll wrote on Facebook in 2021, after his entire family showed up for one of his shows. "You will almost always see me with my daughter, my wife, my nieces. I'm very close with my brothers and cousins. I'm close with my sister. My Uncle and Aunts." Another beach vacation illustrated this in 2020, when the bulk of the clan gathered in Hilton Head, South Carolina, to pay their respects to Buddy on the Father's Day following his death. The post notes that the brothers' brought along their families — Roger and Scott's spouses are named Amy and Laura, respectively — as well as their children, although half-sister Shelby was missing.

It's clear that Jelly Roll has a tight bond with his biological family, and he credits his brother Scott with informing his early musical tastes. "I was probably 12 years old the first time I heard Cypress Hill, my big brother used to bang the s**t out of them. As I got older they also became the soundtrack to my life," wrote Jelly on Facebook in 2016, when he joined the hip-hop group for their 25th Anniversary Tour. Beyond his legal family, the singer appears to consider many others as kin — including plenty of people in the entertainment business. In 2023, Jelly Roll told country singer Ashley McBryde, "you know, I look at you like a sister," while the pair were on stage together on the Women of Country Tour. He made similar claims about Lainey Wilson, saying "That's just my sister. That's how I look at her," in an interview with "Entertainment Tonight" that same year.

Since there are about as many instances of Jelly Roll dropping "little sister" as there are TikTok videos of people dropping it to Tinashe's "Nasty," things can get confusing for the public. Take, for example, Jelly's "Wild Ones" duet partner Jessie Murph, who is featured in plenty of TikToks that show that many viewers don't realize she isn't his biological relative. Jelly Roll has also given the "brother" title to everyone from boxer Austin Dulay to close friend Shi, lead singer of Savage on Midnight.