Posts with the: guiness book of world records tag.

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Snow Dreams It All Up Again

Source: Gwen Michael, jam.canoe.ca

Snow certainly loves to sleep, most people are sitting down for dinner when he’s just waking up.

‘When you’re sleeping, that’s when the gods visit you,’ says the Toronto rapper/singer. ‘You’re only your true self when you’re dreaming. This (pointing at himself) is just a shell.’

On the eve of the release of his latest album ‘Two Hands Clapping’ last week, Snow, a.k.a. Darrin O’Brien, dreamt of playing and running with tornadoes.

Over the past week, he has been dragged from bed to promote the album, which he describes as ‘a nice mixture of reggae and funk and hip-hop.’

He doesn’t claim to be original — he admits to taking from many different kinds of music, but says he creates his own style with it. With eight producers named the album, including his 7-year-old daughter, Justuss, its no wonder his music is a mesh of different hip-hop and reggae flavours.

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Darrin O’Brien Is As Sober And Soft As A Snowflake

Source: Marcus Maleus, www.westerngazette.ca

SnowConsidering the inexplicable popularity of Snow’s breakthrough single ‘Informer’ in the early 90s, many thought it would be the beginning and end of commercial success for the rap/reggae musician from Scarborough, Ontario.

Snow, also known as Darrin O’Brien, spent his early days listening to reggae music and attempting to make out the often mumbled lyrics. Growing up in rough and tumble Scarborough gave him realistic inspiration for hard rap/reggae music. Despite this, he insists he never came out with any particularly negative music.

‘Informer,’ the catchy reggae tune riddled with, at times, un-decipherable lyrics, proved to be an astounding success in both Canada and the United States. The song made its way into the Guinness Book of World Records twice. Once, as the highest selling reggae single in United States history and again as the highest charting reggae single in United Kingdom history.

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Nuff Respect To The Man Called Snow

Source: Gavin Power, Rosco Magazine

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.’

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Snow wins Juno Award

Source: Unknown

Snow with Juno AwardSnow won ‘Best Reggae Recording’ for Informer at the 1994 Juno Awards in Toronto, Canada.

He was also nominated for ‘Album of the Year’ for 12 Inches of Snow and ‘Male Vocalist of the Year’.

Informer went straight to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart in 1993, and stayed there for an impressive seven weeks.

The record went Platinum in both the United States and Germany, Gold in Austria and Silver in the United Kingdom.

It was also entered into the Guiness Book of World Records, twice, as the biggest selling reggae single in U.S. history, and the highest charting reggae single in history.

Besides the U.S., Informer also reached number one in numerious countries, including Australia, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.