He’s been called a lot of things over the years: a murderer, a drunk, an abuser, but nothing hurts Darrin O’Brien, a.k.a. Snow, more than a comparison to Vanilla Ice. Ouch.
Both had hits around the same time. Vanilla with his Ice Ice Baby, and Snow with Informer. Both are white and both were singing black. But that’s where the comparison ends. Over a coffee on Front street, Snow, who’s made a comeback with his new album Mind on the Moon, explains why Vanilla Ice has always been whack.
‘There was a lot of talk about that guy and I always felt a little sorry for him because they (the people around him) made him into that guy. And then he shot his mouth off saying that he grew up hard and all that. It was just lies.’
Darrin did grow up hard. He was raised in a housing project at Don Mills and Sheppard where everybody was getting drunk and fighting all the time. ‘My world was kind of small back then,’ he says as he fidgets with the black toque that he’s pulled down over his ears. ‘That was kind of all that I knew.’