Snow has never understood the ‘white rapper’ label he’s worn all these years. ‘I’ve never been a rapper,’ he says. ‘Eminem’s a rapper. I’m on the borderline. I’m not a reggae artist or a pop artist or a hip-hop artist. It’s just everything mixed.’<\/p>\n
If there’s still any doubt, it should be banished with the release of Mind on the Moon. Snow is now a singer all the way. While there are traces of his reggae-rapping style, called ‘sing-J,’ he has a surprisingly high and airy singing voice, well suited to the album’s light pop sheen, marked mainly by (real) acoustic guitars. The artist known as Darrin O’Brien – an Irishman who got into reggae growing up in the ‘projects’ of North York, Ont. – didn’t plan to be a pop singer, but fans have embraced his new sound.<\/p>\n
Everybody Wants To Be Like You is Snow’s first big hit since 1993’s Informer. It might as well be a different artist. Snow’s music isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Yes, this will be another one of those “bad-boy-gone-good” stories.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
PRISON STINT<\/p>\n
Gone is the angry thug who spent more than 21\/2 years in prison for various crimes, all related to alcohol abuse, he says. During an interview at the Hotel Macdonald yesterday, the two-years-sober rapper – sorry, singer – is humble, gracious and soft-spoken as he talks about his music and his troubled past. A firm believer in the idea that everything happens for a reason, he says he wouldn’t take anything back.<\/p>\n
He wrote Informer while he was in jail – the worst place imaginable being the very thing that launched his career. Although he looks like a hip-hop Robert De Niro, not once does he mutter menacingly, ‘Yo, you talkin’ to me?!’ In fact, there’s no trace of anger in his manner.<\/p>\n
‘I don’t get angry at all anymore,’ he says. ‘I think in the last year I got angry, um,’ he pauses to actually count, ‘maybe three times. I’ve changed a lot … My whole criminal record is all drinking. Nothing else. I guess that’s my problem here. Just quit drinking and I’ll be OK. I’m like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When I drink, I get mean and angry, like I’m allergic to it. No more drinking, no more trouble.’<\/p>\n
NEW DAUGHTER<\/p>\n
Snow credits his changed life to his daughter Justuss, who does guest vocals on the album: ‘This is my daddy and this is his new sound.’<\/p>\n
He laughs, ‘That was one take, too. Better than me. She was in and out. We have a great time. We sing together all the time. On my first three albums, she liked maybe three or four songs. This album here, she likes them all.’<\/p>\n
So he’s got a stable, loving family, a nice house in Scarborough and a happening career. You could say Snow has come a long way. He recalls growing up in North York: ‘It was wild. There’d be like 30, 40 people in the parking lot drinking every night until six in the morning, fighting. That’s who I looked up to. That was it for me. When I was 14, 15, all the Jamaicans started to move in and that’s when I started getting into reggae music. But I still had the bad role models. My role model now is my daughter. Before I didn’t want to learn nothing. I went to Italy, Paris and didn’t want to know nothing. Show me the bar, I’d say. Now I’m learning, reading books because now I’m a teacher. I’ve got to teach my daughter.’<\/p>\n
Snow will soon be making his major motion picture debut with Prison Song. It’s planned for release next spring and stars people like the rapper Q-Tip, Mary J. Blige and Elvis Costello. The film happens to be produced by De Niro – and that’s not the only coincidence. Snow will play a prison guard. ‘I didn’t even have to rehearse this one,’ he says. ‘The funny thing is, just as I got the part, I went into this bar where I’ve never been in and who do I run into? One of the prison guards that was there when I was inside. I hadn’t seen this guy in so long. Why would I run into him and I’m going to be a prison guard?’<\/p>\n
It must’ve been meant to happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Snow has never understood the ‘white rapper’ label he’s worn all these years. ‘I’ve never been a rapper,’ he says. ‘Eminem’s a rapper. I’m on the borderline. I’m not a reggae artist or a pop artist or a hip-hop artist. It’s just everything mixed.’ If there’s still any doubt, it should be banished with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,31,47,42,10,26],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}