MIC/LINE (formerly named Sound Check) is HYPEBEAST Radio‘s music-centric show that looks to deliver in-depth conversations with your favorite artists, digging into their origin stories and asking the questions you want answered. For our newest episode, we have Kranium as our special guest.

The Jamaican-born, New York-raised dancehall star broke out in 2015 after his single “Nobody Has To Know” became an international hit two years after it originally dropped in 2013. The video for the single, which was later joined by Ty Dolla $ign, has garnered over 67 million YouTube plays. Since then, Kranium has released two EPs — Rumors (2015) and The Bilingue’s Time (2017) — and became one of the most recognizable dancehall stars in the world. He credits being persistent as the reason why he’s successful.

“It took a lot of time to be honest with you and I learned nothing beats time,” he says. “Nothing beats persistence and I was very persistent and I listened, that was very important.”

For this episode, Kranium discusses breaking out with his single “Nobody Has To Know,” the power of persistence, cultural appropriation, the explosion in popularity of reggae and afrobeat, being a dancehall artist coming out of New York rather than the Caribbean, and so much more.

You can check out Kranium’s latest singles and features guest spots such as “Sidung,” Lil Kim’s “Nasty One Remix” and Major Lazer’s “Loyal” right now on all streaming platforms.

Keep up with everything HYPEBEAST Radio and subscribe to MIC/LINE on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast or wherever else you enjoy your podcasts. Feel free to reach out to our host, Manny, on Twitter at @ECM_LP and follow HYPEBEAST Music for more original content and music news.