Jelly Roll just accomplished another career first. The 40-year-old just recorded his first Christian song, a collaboration with gospel hitmaker Brandon Lake. The two combine their talents for “Hard Fought Hallelujah.” Lake first released the song as a single in 2024.

Jelly Roll joins Lake on the second verse, singing “I’ve wrestled with the darkness / But I’m trying to reach for the light / Yeah, this trouble keeps me honest / And it breaks down the walls of my pride / ‘Cause faith isn’t proven like gold / ‘Til it’s been through the fire / My head, heart and hands are feeling heavy / That’s when I lift them just a little higher / I’ll bring my hard-fought, hard-felt, been through hell Hallelujah.”

“Working with Brandon was an incredible experience,” Jelly Roll says. “This track touched my soul like few others. ‘Hard Fought Hallelujah’ is a song that will echo through my home for years to come.”

“Collaborating with Jelly Roll on ‘Hard Fought Hallelujah’ was powerful because we both understand what it’s like to walk through battles and still choose to lift a song of hope,” adds Lake. “My prayer is that this song reminds people not to give up—that even in the hardest seasons, there’s growth, purpose, and a victory worth singing about.”

It’s Jelly Roll’s faith that he says helped him become who he is today. After spending years in and out of prison, the Nashville native turned his life around, although he says his transformation is always a work in progress.

“[I’m] taking the time to love myself,” Jelly Roll says on Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show. “Learning to listen to myself. Working …I go to therapy. I take it very seriously. My relationship with God. I’m an old-school Southern man. I’m just really rooted in my faith, and more than anything, I search for purpose. I quit searching to be happy and I started searching to be useful, and that’s when everything changed for me.

“Because to me, I wanna be a man of service,” he continues. “I wanna help people. I want to lead people in the right direction. And I know that when this is all said and done, the jokes we make will come and go, but two things that will stand are how [I] made people feel, and what music was made. And that’s what’s important. I want to lift people up. I tore people down, for decades. I just want to lift us all up.”

Jelly Roll just celebrated his sixth No. 1 single, with “I Am Not Okay.” The song is from his Beautifully Broken album, released in October.

“I had the idea for ‘I am not okay, but it’s all gonna be all right,’ and we tried to write that song probably four different times,” Jelly Roll tells Variety. “I just could not land the plane on it. It either became almost too painful or, the other side of it was, it became too cheeky. It is trying to find that balance where the words come together in a way that make you feel something without cringing. And there’s a thin line then between being able to really touch the human heart and just being a little cringe.”

Jelly Roll has a Top 5 hit with “Liar.” Download or stream “Hard Fought Hallelujah” here. Find all of Jelly Roll’s music and upcoming shows at JellyRoll615.com.