Snow
OFFICIAL SNOW WEBPAGE
This is my tribute page for Snow...I love his music!
No, he's /not/ another Vanilla Ice (or Em??), pls...
and yah, I'm an 80's Grill Mon'!! ;o)
Anyhoo, chill to the stuff below, I have added the URLs
I borrowed from, as well as the pix that were there...
Thx All :o)
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One of The most requested song right now is "I'll Do Anything
For You," done in combination with Buju Banton, Terror
Fabulous, Beenie man and such. Snow, whose real name is
Darrin O'Brien, is of Irish Descent, but grew up in a
predominantly Jamaican area in Toronto, Canada. He said while
growing up, he had nothing to do but drink and fight. He
dropped out of school at grade nine. While living in the
Allenbury projects, he got involved in alcohol abuse and
street fights, and ran with a gang. The DJ became prominent
in 1993 when "Informer" stormed the Billboard pop charts.
The name Snow was given to him by Marvin Prince a Jamaican
friend, which means "Super Notorious Outrageous Whiteboy."
It was Prince who took him in the basement of his parents'
home and taught him reggae music and patois pronounciation.
Later they both moved into an apartment where Prince
continued to hone Snow's career.
Prince then brought Snow to New York, hoping to land a
record deal. While there they met M.C. Shan, a rapper who
later produced the album "12 Inches of Snow." While the
album was in progress, Snow went to prison for a year on an
assault charge, but during that time Prince continued to open
doors for the artiste.
Now it seems like things are paying off for Snow, because he
is now a dancehall artist who is in high demand.
http://www.dancehallreggae.com/snow.html
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"I was in jail and I had a dream I was flying over all these
houses, me and my mother. She was picking out houses. When I
got out of jail, the first thing I bought was a car for me
and a house for her." ~ SNOW
A decade ago, Darrin O'Brien entered prison a troubled young
thug and left an international recording star. It was the
kind of story a Hollywood screenwriter could hardly have
topped, a nigh impossible yet classic tale of uncanny timing
and fortune. But it was all very real. And it was exactly
the kind of cyclone experience that could have left a
youthful talent like O'Brien, better known to the world as
SNOW, chewed up in its wake. It didn't.
Ten years later, SNOW is at the top of his creative game with
TWO HANDS CLAPPING, his fifth and most ambitious musical
statement yet. Delivering on the instant appeal of his early
hits like "Informer" and "Girl I've Been Hurt", TWO HANDS
CLAPPING finds SNOW mastering the dancehall reggae he's best
known for, while introducing to the music new levels of pop
and R&B melody that make for a sturdy offering from
start-to-finish. It's an album that'll get dancefloors
bumping and lovers grooving - feet tapping and heads nodding.
It's a mature pop album, a pop survivor's album. It's a
record SNOW has earned.
"I'm at a place in my life right now where I feel like I
found myself," says SNOW. "I found my style of music on this
album."
That self-awareness and confidence is what drives TWO HANDS
CLAPPING. "It was just all in stride," he says. "'Let's see
if we can come up with something good and have fun,' instead
of trying to make an album."
Sessions for TWO HANDS CLAPPING were done in freewheeling
style in New Jersey, Atlanta, and Miami. In New Jersey, Snow
joined forces with producer Danny P (Robbie Williams, Canibus)
; Tricky and Laney Stewart oversaw the Atlanta sessions; and
in Miami Snow worked with producers Tony Kelly (Shaggy,
Beenie Man, Sean Paul) and Dave Kelly (Shaggy, Beenie Man,
Foxy Brown).
It all started last fall with "Missing You", a song that
came so smoothly SNOW says he could already see the album
taking shape.
"Black And Snow" would become the disc's opening track, and,
as the title implies, features tone-setting tradeoffs between
reggae singer SNOW and rapper Chris Black. "It was an
important start," SNOW says. "It's me back singing in more
of a reggae style again."
Another hip-hop-oriented duel, "Whass Up", came about in
Atlanta with American rap producer Tricky Stewart (Mya, Blu
Cantrell, B2K).
Album closer "Cinco De Mayo", meanwhile, was written in a
Toronto basement studio with SNOW's childhood friend and
longtime collaborator Robbie Patterson. "We wrote it on May 5,
a day when all the planets aligned," Snow explains with a
laugh. "We saw the stars, went downstairs and came up with
that tune. It was my buddy Mikey's birthday, and he'd just
gotten married to a Mexican, so we really knew we had to call
it "Cinco De Mayo"."
Another jam "9 Yards", is about Allenbury, the North York
housing project where SNOW grew up. "That's where my heart
is. If I had to go back and live there again, no problem.
I'd love to have my old house back, just as a little hidden
place to go."
SNOW admits he owes his sound to those streets of his trouble
youth. He was weaned on his mother's cherished collection of
classic R&B albums. He favoured KISS, Ozzy Osbourne, Max
Webster, Queen, and The Police, helping his older brother
Sean stage air-band performances and singing for his first
audiences in grade school. Then, when he was in his early
teens, the largely Irish-Canadian area saw an influx of
Jamaican residents, who brought reggae with them. Darrin
O'Brien was hooked. "I used to get tapes from Jamaica that'd
been dubbed like a hundred times, you could barely hear it.
I'd, like, program my mind, almost like a game, playing and
rewinding. I wasn't trying to learn it to sing it. I just
wanted to know what they were saying!" Soon the patois "just
came out of me," he says.
There were, of course, some now-famous diversions on his
musical route. SNOW was continually in trouble with the law
in his teens. There was the phony attempted murder rap for
which he was acquitted and later chronicled in "Informer".
It was on a trip to New York City while on bail for an
assault charge back home that SNOW was discovered by MC Shan.
Shan was so impressed by the "white boy from Canada's"
freestyle skills he rushed him into a studio to make what
would be the debut 12 INCHES OF SNOW. "I didn't even think
it was going to come out," he says. "I thought it was just a
joke."
After shooting a video for "Informer", he returned to
Toronto for sentencing on the assault charge. He plead
guilty and got a year. He didn't hear the mixed version of
his album. He first saw the "Informer" video in prison.
"I got out after eight months. I got into a limousine and I
was gone. Paris, Rome, Germany."
"Informer" held the #1 spot on the Billboard Singles Chart
for seven weeks in 1993, entering up a Guinness Book Of World
Records as the biggest selling reggae single and highest
charting reggae single in history. "Informer" went on to sell
8 million units worldwide and 3.2 million units in the U.S.
A guy who remembers when he had "no dreams," SNOW laughs his
self-effacing laugh as he looks back on the twist of fate
that made him a household name. He has long since ditched
his criminal past, but held on to his roots. He still has
the same girlfriend (16 years and counting), and is devoted
to their seven-year-old daughter, Justuss.
And he remains proud of what he considers the product of
multi-cultural Toronto: Jamaican dancehall and American R&B
filtered through an Irish kid who jokes that his only excuse
for not "going country" is that he's yet to find a pair of
cowboy boots he doesn't hate.
http://www.urbnet.com/VIBE-feature.asp?ueid=308
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http://www.emptyfree.com/index.php?p=246&c=1
Snow alert
By MIKE ROSS
Snow has never understood the "white rapper" label he's worn
all these years.
"I've never been a rapper," he says. "Eminem's a rapper. I'm
on the borderline. I'm not a reggae artist or a pop artist or
a hip-hop artist. It's just everything mixed."
If there's still any doubt, it should be banished with the
release of Mind on the Moon.
Snow is now a singer all the way.
While there are traces of his reggae-rapping style, called
"sing-J," he has a surprisingly high and airy singing voice,
well suited to the album's light pop sheen, marked mainly by
(real) acoustic guitars. The artist known as Darrin O'
Brien - an Irishman who got into reggae growing up in the
"projects" of North York, Ont. - didn't plan to be a pop
singer, but fans have embraced his new sound. Everybody Wants
To Be Like You is Snow's first big hit since 1993's Informer.
It might as well be a different artist.
Snow's music isn't the only thing that's changed.
Yes, this will be another one of those "bad-boy-gone-good"
stories.
PRISON STINT
Gone is the angry thug who spent more than 21/2 years in
prison for various crimes, all related to alcohol abuse, he
says. During an interview at the Hotel Macdonald yesterday,
the two-years-sober rapper - sorry, singer - is humble,
gracious and soft-spoken as he talks about his music and his
troubled past. A firm believer in the idea that everything
happens for a reason, he says he wouldn't take anything back.
He wrote Informer while he was in jail - the worst place
imaginable being the very thing that launched his career.
Although he looks like a hip-hop Robert De Niro, not once
does he mutter menacingly, "Yo, you talkin' to me?!" In
fact, there's no trace of anger in his manner.
"I don't get angry at all anymore," he says. "I think in the
last year I got angry, um," he pauses to actually count,
"maybe three times. I've changed a lot ... My whole criminal
record is all drinking. Nothing else. I guess that's my
problem here. Just quit drinking and I'll be OK. I'm like Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When I drink, I get mean and angry,
like I'm allergic to it. No more drinking, no more trouble."
NEW DAUGHTER
Snow credits his changed life to his daughter Justuss, who
does guest vocals on the album: "This is my daddy and this is
his new sound."
He laughs, "That was one take, too. Better than me. She was
in and out. We have a great time. We sing together all the
time. On my first three albums, she liked maybe three or four
songs. This album here, she likes them all."
So he's got a stable, loving family, a nice house in
Scarborough and a happening career. You could say Snow has
come a long way. He recalls growing up in North York: "It was
wild. There'd be like 30, 40 people in the parking lot
drinking every night until six in the morning, fighting.
That's who I looked up to. That was it for me. When I was
14, 15, all the Jamaicans started to move in and that's when
I started getting into reggae music. But I still had the bad
role models. My role model now is my daughter. Before I
didn't want to learn nothing. I went to Italy, Paris and
didn't want to know nothing. Show me the bar, I'd say. Now
I'm learning, reading books because now I'm a teacher. I've
got to teach my daughter."
Snow will soon be making his major motion picture debut with
A Prison Song. It's planned for release next spring and stars
people like the rapper Q-Tip, Mary J. Blige and Elvis
Costello. The film happens to be produced by De Niro -
and that's not the only coincidence. Snow will play a prison
guard.
"I didn't even have to rehearse this one," he says. "The
funny thing is, just as I got the part, I went into this bar
where I've never been in and who do I run into? One of the
prison guards that was there when I was inside. I hadn't seen
this guy in so long. Why would I run into him and I'm going
to be a prison guard?"
It must've been meant to happen.
http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/S/Snow/2000/10/14/749728.html
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Monday, July 7, 1997
Toronto Rapper Snow Is Sued For $2.1 Million
Snow, best-known for the three-million-selling album 12 Inches
of Snow which spawned the world-wide hit "Informer" back in
1993, was successfully sued by his business partner DJ Marvin
Prince for 2.1 million dollars, according to The Record.
Prince alleged that Snow, whose real name is Darrin O'Brien,
didn't properly compensate him for his part in making the
rapper an international star. A four-day trial in New York
resulted in favour of Prince's allegations with Snow being
ordered to pay Prince for giving him his stage name,
nurturing Snow's rapping style, helping him get signed and
subsequently touring with him on promotional junkets. Prince
says he only received about $4,000 from Snow for his work
during their collaboration. Where Snow will come up with 2.1
million dollars after the disappointing sales of his last
two albums is anybody's guess.
http://www.chartattack.com/damn/070797.html
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RAPPER SNOW WINS BIG IN COURT CASE
Snow
After losing a 1994 court case launched by a former associate,
rapper Snow (real name Darrin O'Brien) has been vindicated
by a New York State appeals court.
The original case ended with a jury
instructing the dancehall-influenced rapper behind the hit
single "Informer" to pay over $1.5 million to one Marvin
Prince. Mr. Prince had alleged that he was an intergral part
of Snow's success, having helped to lauch the Scarborough
native's local career. That sizable sum of money was reduced
a few months after the fact when a judge deemed it to be too
high, but Snow was having trouble coming up with the cash
nonetheless. After filing an appeal, the case has been thrown
out completely and O'Brien has been cleared of all liability.
"It's great it's over," Snow told the press this week. "I've
been trying to put it out of my mind but it kept haunting
me." As you might have guessed, Prince and O'Brien are no
longer pals (would you stay chummy with a guy who tried to
soak you for over a million bucks?).
http://www.chartattack.com/damn/1999/012799.html#Headline2
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*muah*
Thanks to LISSA for the star cursor! :o)
2002 Starr Starr-All credit given.