Posts with the: jail tag.

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Shovelling Snow With DKO

Source: Bill Delingat, www.cashboxcanada.ca

Snow on Cashbox Magazine front coverA “Rocky Story” of a young upstart Irish boy growing up in the projects; going to jail for a crime he didn’t commit but ending up as the #1 reggae singer and artist in the world.

Cashbox had the opportunity to “Shovel the Snow” with Darrin Kenneth O’Brien on this exclusive Q and A.

Cashbox: When you say the name Snow in the musical circles, so many different stories. almost urban legends surface, one of course being how you became Snow and when you wrote the song “Informer”.
The most popular story being that while you were incarcerated you learned the Jamaican slang patois and wrote the song “Informer”. What music were you listening to before that time?

Snow: No, that’s not quite right, I didn’t learn reggae in jail, and I had always been into the music in my ‘hood as my neighbours were from Jamaica and they were always playing reggae music. When I was like 11 years old and my brother was 14, he used to put on Kiss concerts and he had a hook-up with a ticket agency already at that age. So he would get blank tickets and write on them Kiss concert with like Max Webster opening up. Our nanny made us the costumes with all the makeup and I had long hair and the blood, the whole thing and we had like 120 people show up. We had a stage and everything; it was amazing.
We liked rock ‘n’ roll then and in those days everyone in the projects (where I lived Allenbury Gardens) were Irish, the ‘hood was all Irish families. We listened to Kiss, Rush, Max Webster and had a lot of fun doing these shows. Then when I was around 14 years old and Pierre Trudeau was the Prime Minister, he changed the immigration policies and that’s when all the Chinese came in and in my neighbourhood, the Jamaicans.

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Two Hands Clapping Builds On Success Of ‘Informer’

Source: www.therecord.com

Snow in JamaicaWhen an Irish kid from a rundown Toronto neighbourhood has the power to disrupt a giant beach party in Kingston, Jamaica with merely his presence, it’s fair to say he’s a legitimate star. That’s what happened to Darrin O’Brien, better known as Snow, on a trip to the sunny island late last summer. When the 32-year-old singer arrived at the Stone Love dance, news moved through the 2,000-plus revellers at light speed until the DJ was forced to stop the music and address Snow.

‘It’s like when a supercat walks in somewhere,’ explained Los Angeles-based producer Tony Kelly, who was at the party that August night. ‘They love him in Jamaica. They don’t see him as an outsider.’

Snow, who speaks the thick patois common to the rapping style of reggae that’s known as dancehall, says his fame in Jamaica is a result of keeping his feet firmly on the ground.

‘I’m real and they can feel it,’ he said in a recent interview to promote his latest album, Two Hands Clapping. ‘In Jamaica they don’t know racism. They just know richer or poorer. It’s not black and white, so when they see me doing it they love it.’

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Allenbury To Jamaica

Source: Interview by Harris Rosen, Photos by James Barr and Harris Rosen, www.peacemagazine.com

Peace magazine photoshootSomehow it all seems to suggest things are more complex than they seem. Racial profiling, a season of street violence in Toronto, and the usual innuendoes that Jamaicans brandish the most weapons all become slightly more confusing for those seeking easy explanations. How? Just add Snow.

Born Darrin O’Brien in 1969, Snow grew up in North York’s Allenbury Projects, a place where the dreams of recent immigrants and old school Canadians square off against the often harsh realities of the city’s subsidized housing scene. It’s a place that, according to Snow, has changed dramatically over the past twenty years.

‘When I was growing up I didn’t know people who would break into people’s houses and steal their wedding bands,’ he says. ‘My neighborhood was a place where you’d see a lady come walking by with her purse and her groceries in her hand and somebody run up to her, grab the groceries and help her across the street and bring it to her house.’

Regardless of geography, this is but one tale from a city that’s currently embroiled in a rush of reminiscence about the good old days. From Allenbury to Cabbagetown to Eglinton West, people across Toronto can be heard talking about the 1970s like it was some kind of golden age. Listen to anyone over thirty and pay attention to that far away look in their eyes as they talk with this myth-like reverence about life before the sweep of crime, poverty, and social suffering.

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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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No More Melt-Downs For Snow

Source: Andrew Flynn, www.montrealgazette.com

Snow will never fall again, that much he promises.

From alcohol abuse to jail to stardom to obscurity and back again has been a mostly upward journey, the only direction to go, the singer has decided.

Born Darrin O’Brien and raised in a heavily Jamaican section of suburban North York, Snow, 31, is clearly enjoying his reincarnation from international reggae-cum-rap star – thanks to his huge hit Informer in 1992 – to pop singer. Long gone are the days when he would go on a two-day bender and wake up in a lockup – or a hospital.

“Never again. I’m never going to let my daughter see me behind bars. Never,” he says. “I learned the hard way, but at least I learned.”

Just being around Snow is like experiencing a moderate to heavy caffeine buzz: his intensity is infectious, as if he’s got a nuclear reactor in his socks that needs to be rigorously stifled just so he can sit still.

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