sales of 100,000 and one million, respectively-largely on the strength of Informer. And the song is getting airplay even in Jamaica, where listeners apparently find the Irish-Canadian’s rap style convincing.Īt the same time, Snow’s debut album, 12 Inches of Snow, has hit platinum, with Canadian and U.S. 'I never had nothin' to do except drink and fight' the lane, a licky boom boom down.” Already, Informer is rising with a bullet on European and Asian charts. A raw dispatch from the street, it details his arrest with lyrics that include “Detective man said Daddy Snow I stabbed someone down In fact, Informer, a catchy but largely incomprehensible number, due to Snow’s patois and rapid-fire delivery (the video includes subtitles), seems destined to become the surprise international hit of the year. The song that he wrote in prison, Informer, shot straight to the top of the charts in both Canada and the United States, where it has spent seven weeks in the number 1 position-a Canadian achievement matched only by Bryan Adams. But he has also managed to win phenomenal success as a rookie recording artist. As recently as last year, he served eight months of a oneyear sentence in Ontario’s minimum-security Maplehurst Correctional Centre for assault causing bodily harm. Since then, however, he has continued to have a rocky relationship with the law. “I knew that if I could rock that crowd, I could rock any crowd.”Īfter eight months in jail awaiting trial, Snow was cleared of all charges and released.
“That gave me courage,” said the 23-year-old sensation who now calls himself Snow. And he performed it in the rapping style of reggae known as dancehall-to the delight, he recalls, of his fellow inmates. There, at the Metro Toronto East Detention Centre, he wrote a song about being blamed for someone else’s crime. Then, in 1989, when he was 19, a brawl involving butcher knives sent him to jail onĬharges of attempted murder. Aside from his skill as a street fighter, O’Brien’s only talent was mimicking the thick Jamaican dialect that he heard on reggae records and in his predominantly West Indian neighborhood. His police record includes several convictions-for mischief, causing a disturbance and assault. An indifferent student from a working-class family, he spent much of his time drinking, fighting and getting caught on the wrong side of the law. As a teenager growing up in the housing projects of north Toronto, Darrin O’Brien did not seem to have much of a future.
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