Framed photographs of hip-hop and reggae icons hang on the walls inside radio station studio Wild 98.7 in Tampa, Fla. In a bright sound booth, DJ Jah B dances around animatedly to a song by his next guest. “Skull! Skull!” he shouts from behind the turntables. “Yeah!”

The artist sits across from him, amused. Wearing a bright orange T-shirt and headphones that rest over his head of thick dreadlocks, he waits for his cue and then leans into the microphone: “Hey y’all. It’s your boy Skull. I just flew all the way from Korea to talk to you. Yeah, mon.” The deejays let out a loud “Whoooooo!” 

The 27-year-old reggae artist from Seoul is on a whirlwind mission to make his musical mark in the U.S. Already, he’s creating a stir. His single “Boom Di Boom Di,” which debuted in June, hit the No. 4 spot on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip Hop Single Sales chart and No. 17 on the Hot Singles Sales chart, the highest ranking ever for a Korean artist on the U.S. charts. His solo album will be released this month.

On this mini-tour in Florida, arranged by his manager, Morgan Carey, Skull is the opening act for reggae superstar Buju Banton in St. Petersburg and a special guest at The Marley’s Myspace Secret Show in Miami.

For Carey, these are high stakes moments. In a music scene rooted in Caribbean culture, Skull is quite a novelty. Will the reggae community embrace him? As Skull takes the mic and jams out a few verses, Carey anxiously watches the crowd for the answer.   

“We’ve met some resistance,” Carey says. “At hip-hop clubs, there’ve been people who’ve yelled out, ‘Hey chink, get off the stage,’ or ‘Yo, n-gga. Where you from?’ But Skull’s not that guy who gets angry. He’s there for the music. He’s a true artist. He believes that his music can translate across color lines and it has.”

Skull, aka Cho Sung-jin, says he was a rebel growing up. While most of his peers were listening to K-pop, he would sneak away to underground hip-hop shows. One day, he was standing on the street near a record shop when he heard Bob Marley’s “Legend” album playing inside. 

“I was captivated,” he says. “I just stood there ‘til it finished. It really touched my soul.” 

From then on, Cho hunted down every reggae album he could find, which in Korea, were mostly bootleg copies. While listening to the tracks, he began mimicking the voices and developing his own raspy, Jamaican-inspired singing accent. Cho went on to perform at underground shows with a couple of short-lived bands (he kept the name of his first band, Skull) before forming the reggae and hip-hop duo Stony Skunk, which released three albums in Korea.