It's Snow-ing Again
HOWARD CAMPBELL, Observer writer
Friday, December 06, 2002
If he has any anxiety as to how fickle dancehall fans will react to his new album, singjay Snow was not letting on when Splash caught up with him recently. The 32 year-old was more concerned about the sub-zero conditions he was chilling in in his native Ontario than the response to Two Hands Clapping, his comeback set.
"Man, it's freezing up here," said Snow during a phone link-up. Canada's best-known dancehall export was in Kingston in November soaking up Jamaica's more hospitable climes and dancehall vibe, but has been back in Maple Leaf land promoting Two Hands Clapping, which is being distributed in Canada, Japan and Europe by EMI/Virgin.
It is Snow's first album since the little heard-of Mind On The Moon which was also distributed by Virgin. More significantly, it is five years since the release of Justuss, his third and final album for the Elektra Records affiliate, East West Records; that's a long time to be away from the dancehall where trends change as quickly as the genre's latest fashions.
Yet, Snow is not concerned. "I left on my own, it wasn't like, 'he's no good no more'," he said. "I'm here still, working with the right people. It's going to be easy."
It hasn't been easy on the personal front for the lanky Darren O'Brien (Snow's given name) in the past three years. He says during that period he wallowed in drunkenness and was in and out of Toronto courts answering to a variety of charges that stemmed from his alcoholism.
"I was going on with a whole heap of foolishness but I'm more focussed now and ready to get on with my career," he explained. Two Hands Clapping is not a bad effort from someone who has been away from the scene for a while. Nine years ago, the man many considered dancehall's version of Vanilla Ice raced up the Billboard charts with the smash single Informer and a platinum-selling album, 12 Inches of Snow.
Two years later, Snow got a chance to work with some of his idols including Junior Reid and Ninjaman on Murder Love, the follow-up to 12 Inches; that album contained Anything For You (with Nadine Sutherland) which became a dancehall anthem and gained Snow bona fide acceptance in Jamaica. That single was produced by Dave Kelly.
Snow sought out Kelly shortly after he and his team began work on Two Hands Clapping in September, 2001.
"It was right after 9/11, we went down to New Jersey and came up with the song Missing You and we were like, we gotta get Tony (Dave's brother)and Dave Kelly," Snow recalled.
The Kelly brothers contribute three of the 17 tracks on Two Hands Clapping which hears Snow throwing down his trademark tongue-twisting rap and showing off his understated vocal talents.
In fact, it is the songs on which Snow sings that offer the album's best moments: Lonely Song, with its acoustic guitar and Hammond organ, sounds like something Wyclef Jean would record, while the delightful Cinco de Mayo's country/soul sound shows an artiste unwilling to be categorised.
"I'm not a dancehall artiste, hip-hop or reggae...I mix it up and that's the way I've been doing it from the first album," he reasoned. "I don't really follow what's new, I just follow what I feel."
Yet, he is counting on hard-core dancehall numbers like Legal and Stay Ballin' to get him back in the reckoning here. The former has a remix by producer Jeremy Harding (of Sean Paul fame) and features Elephant Man.
If Snow feels an affinity with the ghetto youth who make the dancehall such a colourful arena, that's understandable. The second of three children born to parents of Irish/Scot descent, he grew up in a neighbourhood of Irish toughs, and was constantly getting into trouble with the law.
Music first came to him through listening to his mother's Rhythm and Blues records and later he discovered the heavy metal of Ozzy Osbourne and KISS. When Jamaican immigrants started 'invading' his community, he found new heroes in dancehall singers like Nitty Gritty and Tenor Saw and the deejay Major Worries.
Snow's venture into music was curtailed by stints in Toronto prisons, where he was when Informer, produced by old school rapper MC Shan, shot-up the American charts. "I saw the video while I was in prison and I used to do it for the inmates and they'd go wild," he remembered with a laugh. "I said if I can rock these guys, I can rock anywhere."
Well into his first year of sobriety, Snow is keen to rock a dancehall that he says has renewed energy but is littered with a "lot of crap".
He awaits his latest judgement with little fear. "I just hope people like it, it's all positive," he said.