Jelly Roll is known for his inspiring, heartfelt speeches. But when he visited a youth detention center in Ohio recently, the singer had something a little less formal in mind.

“Instead of preaching at y’all, I wanna show y’all how bad you suck at spades,” the singer said, deck of cards in hand, as he visited the Domestic Juvenile Court in Franklin County, Ohio.

He was there during a recent stop in Columbus, Ohio as part of his Beautifully Broken Tour earlier this month.

“I’m here to do whatever y’all wanna do. I just wanna come and spread a little love,” Jelly told the inmates as he sat, joked and talked with them during the visit.

In between rounds of spades, the singer asked the incarcerated minors what they’ve been reading lately, and made plans to send new books to the facility. He also drew from personal experience to offer them some words of wisdom during their jail stay.

“I’ve never seen somebody win this game,” he told the kids. “Y’all don’t know nobody that won it. The person you’re thinking about right now that you think won the game is still barely getting by.”

Jelly frequently makes it a point to visit youth detention center, both at home in Nashville and around the country during his off-days on tour.

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His passion project of helping troubled and underserved youth communities comes from personal experience. He’s long been vocal about the fact that he was incarcerated for the first time at age 14, and spent the better part of the next decade in and out of jails, mostly on drug-related charges.

At age 16, Jelly Roll was tried as an adult on an assault charge and incurred a felony conviction. Tennessee has a zero-forgiveness policy for violent offenders, meaning that that felony charge remains with him to this day.

Most recently, he partnered up with the same attorney who once prosecuted him as a youth offender, creating new programs to offer GED and vocational training to at-risk and incarcerated youth in middle Tennessee.