In the heady days of 2002, nothing made clubbers sweat harder than Sean Paul’s “Gimme the Light”, “Get Busy”, “Like Glue”, and “Shake That Thing”. Dancehall took over North America, and its infectious riddims began to permeate mainstream pop music. But despite that breakaway success, very few artists were signed to major U.S. labels, popular Jamaican acts had trouble acquiring performance visas for the States, and interest in the genre began to wane—until recently.

Ten years after the seminal Dutty Rock first hit the charts, dancehall began to see a resurgence. In line with a renewed awareness of the musical style, Justin Bieber, Drake, Rihanna, and Ed Sheeran each drew heavily on dancehall beats for their latest albums, and Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar both featured the genre’s idiosyncratic vocals in recent projects.

Recognizing the growth of dancehall in the mainstream, international labels have—this time—seen its commercial potential. Taking the lead on legitimizing the style’s second wave, Atlantic Records has begun to sign a number of North American–based artists to their roster, including the much-hyped New York native Kranium.

“It feels amazing to be signed to a major, because that means I did something right”, the musician, born Kemar Donaldson, tells the Straight on the line from his home in Queens. “It was a hard thing to do. At first there was a lot of pressure, and I was thinking about what I was going to do with that success. But then I decided to do exactly what I’ve always been doing. My uncle was a dancehall artist too—his name was Screwdriver. He said to just be myself. He told me to remember that I am the shepherd and the fans are the sheep.”

A master of drumming up online support, Donaldson attracted Atlantic’s attention after garnering thousands of hits on his Soundcloud track, “Nobody Has to Know”—a song that later gained an unofficial Chris Brown edit with nearly two million plays, before being re-recorded for an official release with a verse from Ty Dollar $ign.

“The label reached out to me on Twitter,” he recalls in his thick Jamaican accent. “At first, I didn’t believe it at all. I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, Atlantic.’ I didn’t have many followers at the time, so I was like, ‘Whatever’. Then I went to a back-yard party with a barbecue, and I ran into the brother of Atlantic’s A&R director by chance. He said Atlantic had been trying to reach me for the longest time and that they wanted to sign me, so I passed on my manager’s number. It was surreal.”

Having released his debut album, Rumors, in late 2015—a record he describes as a “soap opera” of different personas and voices—Donaldson is positive about the longevity of dancehall music in North America.

“Artists here are starting to realize that dancehall is huge,” he says. “We need to have more soup in music, you know—we need more ingredients in it to make sure we’re not hearing the same things over and over. In the next 10 years, all types of music are going to be really mixed up. Different cultures are coming into music, and dancehall is becoming one of the new trends.”

Kranium plays at Venue on Saturday (May 20).

Follow Kate Wilson on Twitter @KateWilsonSays