Two Hands Clapping for Snow continues to build on success of 1993's Informer
Angela Pacienza
When an Irish kid from a rundown Toronto neighbourhood has the power to disrupt a giant beach party in Kingston, Jamaica with merely his presence, it's fair to say he's a legitimate star.That's what happened to Darrin O'Brien, better known as Snow, on a trip to the sunny island late last summer. When the 32-year-old singer arrived at the Stone Love dance, news moved through the 2,000-plus revellers at light speed until the DJ was forced to stop the music and address Snow.
"It's like when a supercat walks in somewhere," explained Los Angeles-based producer Tony Kelly, who was at the party that August night. "They love him in Jamaica. They don't see him as an outsider."
Snow, who speaks the thick patois common to the rapping style of reggae that's known as dancehall, says his fame in Jamaica is a result of keeping his feet firmly on the ground.
"I'm real and they can feel it," he said in a recent interview to promote his latest album, Two Hands Clapping. "In Jamaica they don't know racism. They just know richer or poorer. It's not black and white, so when they see me doing it they love it."
The reggae artist has felt his fair share of prejudice. When he broke onto the scene practically overnight in 1993 with the tongue-twisting, fast rhyming song Informer he was heavily criticized for trying to appropriate black culture and compared to the defunct rapper Vanilla Ice (remember the song Ice Ice Baby?).
And despite seven albums, he still feels like an outcast from time to time. But Snow says the North American music industry has come a long way from those early days when he was forced to seek the help of black musicians (including Beenie Man) in order to be taken seriously as a reggae artist.
"I had to go and prove myself and then the Americans were like 'He's legit,' " he recalled. "But the barrier is breaking down a lot. When I was growing up nobody was into hip hop, nobody was into reggae. And now white kids, like my daughter, have grown up listening to hip hop on the radio. They're raised into it now."
With Two Hands Clapping, released last month, he says he finally feels like the puppet master.
"I'm more confident now. It's not so much 'Should we like him?' now, that's all over with. And it feels good to see other white kids doing it and doing it well."
Snow got his musical start almost by accident. After dropping out of school in Grade 8, he became a street thug who loitered in parking lots around the Toronto housing project he grew up in, drinking booze and getting into fights.
In 1989 he spent eight months in jail awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder, which were eventually dropped. He blamed an "informer" for the charge. A few years later, at 21, he was charged with assault causing bodily harm. While out on bail he recorded Informer with the help of a friend. It was in his jail cell - he pleaded guilty to the assault charge - that he first watched a music video for the song.
Needless to say a lot of people were shocked when the song held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Singles Chart for seven straight weeks, earning Snow a Guinness Book of World Records entry as the biggest selling reggae single in U.S. history and highest charting reggae single in the U.K.
While Snow acknowledges that he's still thought of as "the Informer guy" - making many references to it in the new album - he's adamant the thug that birthed him is dead.
"I didn't know how to act. I was getting kicked out of every place in the world, like school and the mall. Then I go to jail and I see my video for the first time. I get out and a limo picks me up and I'm flying all over the world. It was confusing," he said, explaining how he fell into alcoholism.
"It wasn't like I was trying to work like some garage bands. Me, I didn't want to do this. A guy on a street corner talked to me and we laid it down almost like a joke and then it blew up to No. 1 in the world.
"But its success was great because it took me away from the stuff (crime) I was doing."
And now he wants to keep others away from the bad-boy life as well. He's trying to use his popularity to evoke change in his old neighbourhood, which has been a hotbed of gang-related crime in the past few months.
"I go to my neighbourhood all the time and tell them the most positive stuff that I can. All that gang shit has got to stop," he said.
He tries to be a role model by living in that community, where he's raising his seven-year-old daughter.
"People in my neighbourhood want to live that bling-bling style. So what are they going to do? They're not making enough money working at McDonald's and stuff and they're still in school so they've got to sell drugs to get the Nikes and the bling-bling. I don't support that at all," he said.