Posts with the: informer tag.

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Rapper Prefers Life On Charts To Stretches Behind Bars

Source: Neil Davidson, www.ottawacitizen.com

Somehow it seems appropriate that Snow’s favorite hockey player is Bob Probert.

The Canadian rapper and Chicago Blackhawks tough guy have a lot in common: run-ins with the law, alcohol problems and subsequent immigration headaches.

Probert is struggling to revive his career. Snow is determined to keep his on track, starting this week with the release of his second album, Murder Love.

His 1993 debut, 12 Inches of Snow, was a million-seller highlighted by the huge hit Informer.

It hasn’t always been easy for the 25-year-old Toronto native, who uses the liner notes on Murder Love to thank his lawyer and others “for keeping me out of jail.”

And Snow says he hopes to do the same for others, figuring kids may listen to him because he’s been there.

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Musical Forecast : Look For Snow

Source: Patricia Meschino, www.reggaereport.com

One of the most satisfying cuts on Canadian DJ Snow’s new release, Murder Love, is a tale of his love affair with Reggae music called “Dream.” Here Snow reminisces about his days in Toronto’s Allenbury housing project, where he first became acquainted with Reggae through the friendships formed with the many Jamaicans who had moved into his area: .. ‘Listen Shabba Ranks playing faintly from the speaker/I would eat mi curry chicken, that’s my favorite supper/If you think mi joke or lie, gwaan ask me mother/I would living on the island sweet, sweet Jamaica/Fish with Coco Tea down in the river/Hanging at the ghetto with me boy they call Ninja/No, but it’s only a dream.’

“Dream” goes on to describe imagined evenings spent at Kingston’s Godfather’s nightclub and sessions with the Stone Love sound system. If the song had more verses, it might have depicted other ambitions of the aspiring DJ, like performing at Jam World for Reggae Sunsplash and ripping up the crowd at Topline and other crucial Kingston dance hall sessions. Yet, something Snow could never have imagined was that his first album for Motor Jam/EastWest Records, 12 Inches of Snow (released in 1993), would go platinum and the first single from the album, “Informer,” would top the Billboard Pop Charts for seven weeks!

“When I did that album, it was just for fun,” Snow recalls. “I wasn’t thinking this album’s gonna blow up. I didn’t really think nothing of it, I just loved doing it. When it did blow up, I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ Now, I look on my wall and I see these plaques and I think, ‘Yeah, they’re sure.'”

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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.

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Snow Storm – A Canadian Rapper Hits The Charts Like The Blizzard Of ’93

Source: www.people.com

Sure, white guys can rap. But no way can a skinny, can’t-dance Canadian who has never even seen the Caribbean master Jamaican toasting, a reggae-flavored rap style delivered in singsong patois at auctioneer speed.

Better make that Snow way. Born in Toronto, Snow, 23, has established himself as rasta rap’s gab-gifted savant with “Informer,” the catchy single that reigned at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for seven weeks. Though its lyrics are delivered at such bewildering speed that the video carries subtitles, the radio-ubiquitous song has pushed the debut album that spawned it, 12 Inches of Snow, into the Top 5.

Snow (real name: Darrin Kenneth O’Brien) learned the rap style from neighbors in the mostly Jamaican housing project where he grew up, the second of four children born to a cabdriver father and a homemaker mother.

A ninth-grade dropout (“I didn’t know how to read that well; still don’t”), he graduated to the slammer after a string of arrests for street brawling. In the projects, violence became routine, Snow says. “I would just chill out, drink, whatever. People would walk by, we’d get all drunk and beat ’em. Tempers, I guess.”

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EastWest Touts Show For All Seasons

Source: Janine McAdams, www.billboard.com

With “Informer,” white Canadian artist Snow has managed to put a dancehall-derived tune sung in Jamaican patois in the No. 1 position on the Hot 100 Singles chart for seven weeks. In addition, the single (which features a rap by M.C. Shan) has become an international hit, reaching No. 3 on the U.K. chart.

For EastWest, the artist’s label, the current task is to keep the momentum going. “Now the challenge of establishing Snow as an artist really confronts us,” says Sylvia Rhone, CEO/chairman of EastWest Records. “When you have that phenomenal single that a lot of people can say is a novelty, we have to prove it’s not a one-trick pony.”

To that end, EastWest plans to expand on Snow’s urban base with the loping hip-hop ballad “Girl, I’ve Been Hurt,” to be released April 26. The label is targeting the R&B/hip-hop audience in an effort to stabilize Snow’s street credibility. To further that goal, the new single includes an extended “bogle” mix by Jamaican superproducers Sly Dunbar &; Robbie Shakespeare.

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