As hip-hop reached Ontario - which, like most of Canada, imports its pop culture - Snow was influenced by Doug E. I didn't really know who they were I just heard them all the time, and I guess some of it comes out in what I do."Īs for his early influences, none was Canadian: "First I wanted to be Bruce Lee, then I wanted to be Kiss," he says. "My mom was heavily into the R&B of the time - Rick James, George Benson, a lot of guys with big Afros. Snow, a junior high school dropout, moved to New York after his release from prison because, he says, "everybody I work with is down here anyway." When asked what he likes best about the Big Apple's multicultural stew of endless events, he shrugs, says he doesn't go out except with his posse to the same couple of joints, then drawls, "I like hanging around my apartment and going across the street to get hero sandwiches."ĭarrin O'Brien first got turned on to music via his mother's large record collection. There's something teenage and unformed about him. That, along with his Sean Pennish looks and his sweetly reedy tenor on romantic cuts like "Girl I've Been Hurt," is probably just the right mix to keep teenagers on the hook - especially girls, who seem to make up the bulk of his audience. Snow in the flesh comes across as a combination of street-smart and naive. "Informer" is from Snow's debut album, "12 Inches of Snow," which successfully blends hip-hop and ragamuffin beats with violent posturing and love songs. Want to see me rip that chair apart and put it back together?" He gestures to a swivel chair in his record company's conference room here.
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"I spent my days going to school I was taking English and health and upholstery, learning how to make couches and all. Had a big yard where you could play baseball.
He has only fond memories of his most recent place of detention: "It was nice, clean, it had a school. Snow still has to report occasionally to parole officers in Canada, but today he seems a reformed man. Snow earlier spent eight months in pretrial detention on attempted murder charges, which were later reduced to aggravated assault he was acquitted in a jury trial. That was for beating somebody with a crowbar in a bar brawl he pleaded guilty. "I just got out in January after doing eight months of a one-year sentence," Snow says. (Detective man said Daddy Snow/ I stabbed someone down the lane.) He says "Informer," the story of a mistaken bust caused by a squealer, parallels one of his brushes with the law. Snow - real name Darrin O'Brien, the son of a cabdriver - grew up in a tough Toronto housing project with many Jamaican neighbors, who turned him on to the dancehall sound. Some regard him as another Vanilla Ice: a white star carpetbagging in a black genre, boasting about his criminal background.īut unlike Vanilla Ice, whose resume hyped his gangster history, Snow, 23, has a bona fide rap sheet: two stints in prison since age 20. "Informer" bypassed the reggae charts completely on its way to crossing over - which doesn't exactly endear Snow to many segments of the Jamaican diaspora. pop charts, and one of the first videos ever to appear on MTV with subtitles. It's a worldwide hit, the first dancehall reggae song to reach No. Snow's hit single "Informer," a brightly buoyant track backing his tongue-twisting deejay work in Jamaican patois, has just broken the million-seller mark. He recently finished time in a Toronto jail for assault, he's on parole back in Canada, and he needs to keep his nose clean while doing this stardom thing. It may not be the weapon of choice in Kingston's Trenchtown, but here in Manhattan's midtown, Snow wouldn't want to be caught packing anything heavier. NEW YORK - Snow, an Irish-Canadian rapper who sings like a Jamaican and is beloved by American teenagers, has spent his time between interviews today shopping, so he arrives to talk armed with a new Super Soaker rifle.