It’s all in the name for Struggle Jennings.

As the second part of his hip-hop moniker suggests, the country-rapper born Will Harness is the grandson of outlaw country singer Waylon Jennings and the nephew of Shooter Jennings. But early in his career in the early 2000s, he was just Young Struggle and later Struggle, reflecting his hard-knock lifestyle that eventually landed him in jail on drug charges between 2011 and 2016.

“I fought the ‘Jennings’ part because it’s not my real last name, because I have my dad’s last name,” Jennings said while traveling between tour stops in Big Bear Lake, California. He will make his Bend debut at the Domino Room on Friday. “So I fought that because I never wanted to ride on that. There was a time when I wouldn’t even tell anybody that Waylon was my grandfather on some musical (stuff), because I didn’t want that to define me. I wanted to become my own artist. But when I got incarcerated, the media were the ones that started saying, ‘Struggle Jennings, Struggle Jennings, Struggle Jennings.’”

His longtime business partner convinced him to adopt “Jennings,” reasoning that “if you google ‘struggle,’ you’re not gonna ever be the first thing that pops up.” And after his experiences in prison, Jennings found himself willingly embracing his grandfather’s legacy.

“He left that legacy and he worked his ass off so that that meant something,” Jennings said. “So I catch hell from some people — you know, you got haters — but all in all, it just became who I am.”

Family and legacy have become more important as Jennings’ career has taken off since his release from prison. His most recent album, November’s “Angels & Outlaws,” finds him once again collaborating with daughter Brianna Harness, with whom he’s worked on numerous singles and an EP from last year, “Sunny Days.” He also released a 2018 collaborative EP with his mother, Jenni Eddy Jennings, titled “Spiritual Warfare.”

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes and ended up incarcerated, and watching how it affected my family just gave me a whole new inspiration and determination to really make it all about family,” Jennings said, “and just live life, enjoy it and be the best version of me I can be and make the music that’s true to me. My daughter’s got an amazing voice, and I couldn’t be happier or prouder. That’s really one of the biggest successes — my biggest success to me personally is just being able to give her that platform and to watch her shine and watch her develop into the huge artist she’s gonna be.”

“Angels & Outlaws” marked the fifth album or EP from Jennings in a one-year span, as he pointed out in a Facebook post around the release of the album. The other releases include the aforementioned “Sunny Days” and “Spiritual Warfare”; “The Widow’s Son,” his solo album and proper follow-up to 2013’s “I am Struggle”; and “Waylon & Willie III,” the third in a series of collaborations with longtime friend and fellow country-rapper Jelly Roll.

While “The Widow’s Son” and “Waylon & Willie III” leaned into harder hip-hop than some of Jennings’ previous releases (albeit with undercurrents of twanging pedal steel), “Angels & Outlaws” swings toward hard rock thanks to contributions from Trap DeVille. The album is credited to Jennings, Brianna Harness and DeVille, all three of whom will perform in Bend alongside a full band.

“We don’t really go into the studio saying, ‘Hey, I’mma cut a country record,’ or, ‘Hey, I’mma cut just a real hard rap or a rock album,’” Jennings said. “We just go in there, man, and whatever the vibe is, whatever we come up with, that’s just what we do. And with Trap DeVille, my guitar player and an artist that I’m pushing, he’s got that real rock sound.”

Naturally, the Jennings legacy surfaces on the “Waylon & Willie” series, named for the 1978 Waylon Jennings-Willie Nelson collaborative album. A fourth part is in the works for later this year among many other projects, including Brianna Harness’ first solo album and Jennings’ solo follow-up to “The Widow’s Son,” he said.

“Of course it’s a big gamble or risk to put out an album called that — you know, you’ve got some old-school fans,” Jennings said. “… Willie had a big inspiration on Jelly’s life, and Jelly’s just kind of Willie — that free-spirited stoner. He is so much like him in characteristics. And Waylon raised me. It was just one of those things. We really decided on the name because of the friendship and the dynamic that Waylon and Willie had is so parallel with me and Jelly’s.”

Jennings isn’t kidding about being raised by Waylon. His mother sang backup for the outlaw legend for “probably the first 10 years” of Struggle Jennings’ life.

“There was times in the summer when I wasn’t in school, I’d get to go out on the road and travel with him,” he said. “… The way he moved as far as just in the super professional, polite manner — everybody that Waylon encountered, he treated good. If a fan came up and wanted a picture or wanted an autograph, it didn’t matter if he was sitting at the dinner table, he’d do it. And that’s just something that I took from him. It’s the fans that are buying the dinner, the fans that are really giving us this platform and giving us this opportunity to be artists.”

Despite classic country music being “in the backdrop” throughout Jennings’ childhood, he grew up on ’80s and ’90s hip-hop. He met country-rappers such as Jelly Roll and Yelawolf — another frequent collaborator — early in his performing career.

When Jennings was in his 30s, country re-entered his life in a big way. He started to experiment with rapping over his grandfather’s music on singles such as “Outlaw S—,” culminating with 2013’s “I am Struggle.” By the time of its release, Jennings was in jail, but the album’s success helped him turn his life around.

“Everything on the outside felt like it was just falling apart,” he said, “but I had that glimmer of hope where it was like, ‘You know what? Something is happening, and I have an opportunity right now that if I take control of my life — because I can’t control anything that’s going on outside. I can control what I’m doing in here with myself.’ So I just really took the initiative to dig deep and find out what it was that was causing me to continue to go in and out of facilities and into trouble and live this vicious cycle.”

What: Struggle Jennings, with 2Live Bre, Savage Watson

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend

Cost: $15 plus fees in advance, $50 plus fees in advance for meet-and-greet

Contact: midtownbend.com or or 541-408-4329

GO! listen to Struggle Jennings’ latest album, “Angels & Outlaws”