Rapper-turned-country music star Jelly Roll on Thursday delivered an impassioned plea to Congress to pass legislation targeting deadly fentanyl in the United States.

The Grammy-award winning singer, whose real name is Jason DeFord, drew on his history as a drug dealer. 

“I was a part of the problem. I am here now standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution,” Jelly Roll, 39, told the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

“I am a stupid songwriter, y’all. But I have firsthand witnessed this in a way most people have not,” he added.

The committee held a hearing on legislation introduced by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., that would impose sanctions on transnational criminal organizations, including cartels, for trafficking illicit fentanyl and its precursors. 

Jelly Roll told lawmakers that 190 people die of a overdose every day in the U.S., roughly the number of people that fit on some Boeing 737 airliners. 

“Could you imagine the national media attention it would get if they were reporting that a plane was crashing every single day and killing 190 people?” he asked. “But because it’s 190 drug addicts, we don’t feel that way. Because America has been known to bully and shame drug addicts, instead of dealing and trying to understand what the actual root of the problem is with that.”

The "Son of a Sinner" singer, however, said attitudes about addiction have shifted because most people have lost a friend, family member or colleague to drugs. 

“I’ve attended more funerals than I care to share with y’all,” Jelly Roll said. “ … I could sit here and cry for days about the caskets I’ve carried of people I loved dearly, deeply in my soul — good people, not just drug addicts. Uncles, friends, cousins, normal people. Some people that just got in a car wreck and started taking a pain pill to manage it. One thing led to the other and how fast it spirals out of control.”

He said when he sold drugs he believed it was a victimless crime. 

“My father always told me, ‘What doesn’t get you in the wash would get you in the rinse,’ ” he said. “Now I have a 15-year-old daughter whose mother is a drug addict. Every day I get to look in the eyes of a victim in my household of the effects of drugs.”

Jelly Roll urged Congress to pass the bill, known as the FEND Off Fentanyl Act. 

“It is time for us to be proactive and not reactive,” he said. “ … I truly believe in my heart that this bill that this bill will stop the supply and can’t help stop the supply of fentanyl.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, the committee’s chair, joked before the singer’s opening statement, “I’m guessing most of you didn’t have Jelly Roll testifies at Senate Banking Committee on your ’24 bingo card.”

But, Brown added, “few speak and sing as eloquently, as openly, as, shall we say, viscerally about addiction as Mr. DeFord. There’s a reason why Americans flock to his music and his concerts. He has a connection with people based on shared pain, shared challenges, shared hope.”

The legislation cleared the committee with an unanimous vote last year. Scott blamed “shenanigans” in the House in late 2023 — presumably the ousting of Speaker Kevin McCarthy and weeks-long search for his successor — for the bill not yet being law.

“It’s not just frustrating to those of us on this committee, those of us in Congress; it’s incredibly frustrating to the people of our country who watched the devastation eat away at their communities,” Scott said.

“Anything that we can do as a body to make common sense reforms, to hold those accountable and to stop that cash flow that funds fentanyl, it’s absolutely essential that we get it done right now,” the South Carolina Republican said.

The legislation has 67 cosponsors — 34 Republicans, 33 Democrats. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 107,000 people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. Opioids were involved in three-quarters of overdose deaths, and synthetic opioids were involved in 88% of all opioid-related overdose deaths.