The Rock Shares Emotional First In-Person Meeting with Jelly Roll After Nearly 10 Years of Friendship

In a meeting that was nearly a decade in the making, fans got to watch as the two superstars met up for the first time in person in a sweet and touching video.

In the video, Johnson finds Jelly Roll coming out of his trailer and immediately praises him for his weight loss efforts.

"Man, I'm so proud of you," he says as Jelly Roll tells him he's down 200 pounds so far, with another 100 to go. "I feel great, too," Jelly smiles.

The two men reminisce about their shared Nashville roots, with Johnson recalling how he lived with a man who became a dear friend at just 15 years old after his family got evicted in Hawaii and he thought he'd be able to live with his father.

That man, with whom Johnson is still close, gifted him a vintage postcard of the motel they lived in, and Johnson wanted to carry that gift forward and hand it off to Jelly.

"I feel bad even taking this," Jelly said, but Johnson wasn't going to take no. "No, no. I'm gonna sign that to you. He'll love that I just gave you that."

Jelly then shared how he's come to learn what really matters as he's finally made it in the music industry. "When you first get in the business, in our business, you dream of all the plaques to cover the rafters, you know?" he said. "So you start filling your walls up with plaques."

"And then, Kid Rock writes you a note, and you cherish it like more than anything," he continued. "And then Craig Morgan handwrites his lyrics to 'Almost Home' and give them to you at the Grand Ole Opry, and you cry like a baby."

At this, Johnson dropped a "Wow," as Jelly added, "You hang 'em, and the next thing you know, all the plaques came down." He then shook the postcard and said, "That's this. This is relationship."

Johnson's "Wow" was because he'd actually been just listening to Morgan on the drive up to meet Jelly, showing him the song on his playlist. It was like that final connection that confirmed everything they already knew about one another.

In the caption to the video share, Johnson wrote of that unexpected moment, "A big SURREAL shout out to our boy @craigmorgan 🎶 who I was just listening to in my truck as I pulled up to meet Jelly. How’s THAT for the universe conspiring for us!! F#%king crazy 🤯"

Both men got vulnerable about that first unexpected connection in 2017 when Johnson was being the big action movie star on the outside, but "going through some s--t" on the inside. A chance encounter with one of Jelly Roll's songs inspired Johnson to reach out.

In the caption to his video, Johnson wrote, "Several years ago (roughly 2017) I was going through a very hard thing at the time, I was struggling. My mental wellness turned into my mental hellness."

"Many of you know the drill, you put on 'the face,' show up to work, smile and get through it," he continued. "Perhaps not the healthiest thing to do, but it’s what I was used to doing at the time."

"I said, 'Brother, you have never met me, I've never met you, but I just heard a song from you and it really f--king rocked me," Johnson said in his video of the track "Only."

"It moved me," he continued. "I'm going through some s--t and I just want you to know that this song means a lot to me. And I look forward to meeting you one day."

"That's what music does," Jelly Roll said after Johnson revisited the story. "It has the ability to meet us there."

But it turns out that chance moment proved pivotal for him, too, as a struggling artist trying to raise a family. "You don't know what that meant to me, because, you know, I'm at a point in my career then where you're wondering will it even work," he told Johnson.

He said that he and wife Bunnie Xo were having those conversations about whether or not he should throw in the towel on this whole music thing and go back to college and get a 9-to-5 job.

"I'm starting to have those kinds of conversations," he said, "And then I'm seeing you post this and I'm like, 'Oh no!'"

"I call them God waves," he said. "It's like any time you're a little sideways and God gives you one of those, Nah, I'm straight. I'm straighter than I thought I was. I'm cool, we're coasting, we're doing good."

Jelly Roll hung in there and finally achieved his breakthrough moment just a few years later when both "Son of a Sinner" and "Need a Favor" catapulted him into mainstream success in 2022. And Johnson was right there in his corner the whole way.

"When I won my first award, he beat my mother into my inbox," Jelly told the film crew on hand to capture their first-ever in-person meeting. "I'm not bulls--tting, it took my mom a whole 'nother hour. DJ was in there immediately, like, 'Finally, one of us.'"