Spotify Launches ‘Countdown To’ Vodcast With First Episode Featuring Jelly Roll, MGK

Jelly Roll and mgk are helping Spotify launch its new vodcast series Countdown To, which offers viewers a behind-the-scenes introduction to artists’ upcoming projects as they count down to album launch day.

In July, Spotify expanded its Countdown Pages tool, which helps artists and their fan bases gear up for album launches by allowing listeners to preview tracklists, watch clips, acquire artist/album merch and see a timer count down the seconds until album launch.

With Countdown To, artists sit down with their fellow artists, album collaborators, family members and friends to dive into a new album’s music, themes and inspirations. The interview-spearheaded series is located on the artist’s Countdown Page, while the full video will be available as a vodcast episode on Spotify, and on Spotify’s YouTube page.

The inaugural episode features Jelly Roll in conversation with mgk, as the countdown ticks to the release of Jelly Roll’s upcoming album Beautifully Broken on Oct. 11. Jelly Roll and mgk previously teamed up for the song “Lonely Road.”

“I felt early in this writing process, it was becoming my journal of mental health,” Jelly Roll said, adding, “It’s the longest time I’ve took writing a single project… I really wrote this record hoping that people would feel that they were spoken for. What I hear the most from people is, ‘Man, this song says what I can’t.’ And that sticks with me, dude… That’s what I want them to get from this album.”

They also discussed how they went from enemies to friends, with mgk saying, “So, our beginnings were interesting,” and sending Jelly Roll into a deep laugh. “It is so funny how much I love you now,” said mgk, “because like, God, I hated you so much back then.”

Jelly replied with a laugh, “I was just a spiteful, bitter f–kin’ dude, you know what I’m saying?” adding, “I explain this to people and they don’t understand the concept because of our age now. Whenever I talk to my daughter, I’m like, ‘You gotta understand there was only like seven white rappers on Earth at this time, so it was so competitive when you was in that pool, that we were kind of automatically forced against each other anyways.”

“For sure,” mgk said. “You’re bred to hate each other.”

“And you were just like, just skinny and handsome,” Jelly Roll said. “So I was like, I was just a hater. I was just a hater, dude! It’s hard to grow up in front of the whole world.”

“This might be one of my favorite mgk disses, was, ‘F–k Machine Gun Kelly and his mohawk,’” mgk said, eliciting more laughs from Jelly Roll. “Because you just had this Southern drawl on your voice, where you didn’t say ‘mohawk,’ you said ‘mo-hawck.’ And that mohawk, dude, my mohawk was f–kin’ just a nice, eight inches of just egg whites and cheap hairspray…”

Jelly Roll’s song “I Am Not Okay,” featured on Beautifully Broken, is currently at No. 9 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart. Meanwhile, the album shares its name with Jelly Roll’s just-launched arena tour, which also features openers Warren Zeiders and Alexandra Kay.

Jelly Roll also talked about the struggle of balancing life on the road with being there for his family, and the two also discussed the ever-broadening reaches of country music, and compared the widening borders of rock and country.

“Countdown To is the latest effort in our ongoing commitment to spotlight artists and their new music on Spotify,” Sarah Patellos, head of Spotify Music Studios, said in a statement. “Working with director Karam Gill and mgx creative, these intimate conversations are shot documentary-style to really get to the root of each artist’s creative journey.”

See Jelly Roll and mgk’s discussion below: