Posts with the: informer tag.

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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 Gives Sobering Message And Performance At Shark Tank Pub

Source: Amanda Newman

Snow performing at Shark Tank PubSnow performed for Belleville and a near capacity crowd at the Shark Tank Pub on Thursday night. Darrin O’Brien, known as Snow, who was raised in the Allenbury social housing projects in North York and is the voice behind the 1993 hit single Informer.

He performed that song along with material from his album Mind On The Moon released in October 2000. ‘The show was excellent. It was a more intimate show than we’ve had in the past. I think he enjoyed Belleville. This show had a lot of energy,’ said Fred Pollitt, director of student life at Loyalist College.

Snow was accompanied on stage by two dancers and fellow male performer Candy, while fans surrounded the area around the stage. Snow dropped out of school in Grade 8 and began drinking at age 13 hanging out with a bad crowd. ‘I might go back to school and learn some shit because my daughter is getting smarter than I am,’ he said on stage. When an audience member suggested he have a drink, Snow had this comment for the crowd:

‘I don’t drink alcohol, it’s good for you, but I wound up in prison,’ he told the crowd.

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Snow Storm Returns

Source: Mike Bell, jam.canoe.ca

Canadian reggae hip hop artist Snow (a.k.a. Darrin O’Brien) has battled his demons.

His ghost, on the other hand, he just hangs out with.

“He’s a wicked ghost,” the soft-spoken performer says of the spirit. “Billy would mess with us.”

Billy was a childhood friend of his who died three years ago in the house the musician bought for his own mother. According to Snow, Billy’s ghost now inhabits the attached recording studio where he cut his latest album Mind On The Moon.

Some of the shenanigans attributed to his dear departed friend include playing instruments in other rooms, moving secured microphone stands, and generally insinuating himself into the recording process.

“But now my mother’s moving and selling the house,” says Snow, who plays The Palace tonight.

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Evil Spirits

Source: Access All Areas and Primetime

Evil Spirits photoshootDarrin O’Brien has never worked a day in his life — kind of. The Toronto-bred singer whose rapid-fire Jamaican patois helped lodge the song ‘Informer’ on top of the Billboard Singles chart for seven weeks back in 1993 admits to having never held employment outside the music business. ‘The first job I ever had was music,’ he says, ‘and it’s a hard job.

Wrapped in cigarette smoke, O’Brien, better known to the world as Snow, is sitting in a cafe kitty-corner to MuchMusic’s Toronto studios. It’s Thanksgiving, a holiday Monday, and the streets are suitably quiet. It’s also the day before Snow’s comeback record, Mind On The Moon, arrives in stores so he’s working hard to sell me — and the rest of Canada — on his continued relevance.

So far, the odds seem to be in his favour. ‘Everybody Wants To Be Like You’, Mind On The Moon’s first single, sits at Number 2 on Soundscan’s Singles chart as of this writing, and while critics have been less than enthusiastic about Snow’s return (Matt Galloway of Toronto weekly NOW refers to Moon as a ‘scrubbed-down teen-pop nightmare’), MuchMusic and mainstream radio have embraced their prodigal son.

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Snow Settles In

Source: Chris Lamb, www.teenmusic.com

In 1993 Jurassic Park was a monster movie and the Chicago Bulls NBA champions. Grunge rock was in fine form and airbags were the newest car safety devices since front-wheel drive. 1993 was also enthralled with the relatively new sound of rap and that year’s biggest rap song was undoubtedly Informer, a worldwide number one hit by Snow.

Snow recorded Informer as a troubled youth and his life instantly transformed from troublemaker into pop star. Fame and money followed in the wake of the single, taking Snow around the world to promote and perform his debut album ’12 Inches of Snow.’

Born Darrin O’Brien, Snow grew up in the Allenbury projects in North York, a subsidized neighborhood of the Greater Toronto Area. A school dropout in grade eight, Snow immersed himself in Toronto’s street culture, acquiring a criminal record and an interest in music. Reggae and hip-hop were particular favorites and Snow developed a unique rapping sound that became known in the East Coast music scene. While on vacation in New York Snow began recording ’12 Inches of Snow’ with producer MC Shan.

The album was released and the first single, Informer, found heavy rotation on radio and TV. ‘Informer’ sat at #1 on the Billboard Singles Chart for seven weeks straight in 1993 and is entered into the Guinness Book of World Records twice – as the Biggest Selling Reggae Single in U.S. History and Highest Charting Reggae Single in history.

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