Jimmie Allen is a doting father now, but he wasn’t excited about becoming a parent to his son, Aadyn, now six years old, when he first found out he was going to be a dad. The Delaware native was working three jobs, and barely able to make ends meet, when his then-girlfriend told him the news.

“I was broke when I had my son,” Jimmie told People. “I was working three jobs — I was a server, a janitor at an elementary school and I was collecting trash for waste management. And I get a call … every guy gets this text and you always think the same thing. [My son’s mom said] ‘Hey, we need to talk.'”

Aadyn’s mom told Jimmie that they were going to be parents, but it took him a couple of days to get used to the idea.

“I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t excited at first,” Jimmie admitted. “I was nervous, I was scared and I was sick. I didn’t leave the house for, like, two days. I just laid on the bed … After two days, I was excited and I was ready. But the first two days, I was freaking out.”

Jimmie moved to Nashville to pursue music, but it wasn’t easy. The singer even lived out of his car for a time, all so he could support his child.

“The crazy thing is after I had my son, that next year, I got a publishing deal,” Jimmie recounted. “The next year, I got a record deal.”

Jimmie welcomed his second child, daughter Naomi Bettie, earlier this year, whom he shares with fiancée Alexis Gale. In addition to being a proud father, Jimmie has also been speaking out against racism, ever since the tragic death of George Floyd.

“One thing that I’ve been doing with my black friends and my black family, I’ve been telling them, ‘In the midst of wanting to get your point across, delivery’s everything,” Jimmie said on The Bobby Bones Show. “‘Hateful words don’t welcome a listening ear. You have to give information, give your point of view, but still give people time to process things the way they need to.’ The biggest thing isn’t about me telling them. The biggest thing is about making sure people can understand and process things the way they need to.

“I can sit here and just yell and yell and yell, and nobody understands what I’m saying,” he continued. “That defeats the whole purpose of what this movement is. I feel like this movement is big on love and understanding. It has to be understanding from both sides.”