Life according to Snow: “I don’t have to be nothing I don’t want to be.”<\/p>\n
And who is Snow? A white, Irish, Canadian-born, 23-year-old dance hall rapper who’s responsible for Informer, the No. 1 single on the Billboard charts for the past three weeks.<\/p>\n
Being white in a black-dominated rap world is no problem, he says. “Nobody’s dissed me yet.”<\/p>\n
Yes, Vanilla Ice comes to mind. Snow knows that.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t talked to him,” he says. “He did his thing \u2026 People just killed him.”<\/p>\n
Does Snow (real name: Darrin O’Brien) worry about the same fate?<\/p>\n
“If they do, that’s what’s going to come. I’ll keep putting out good music so they can’t kill me.”<\/p>\n
Informer’s popularity speaks for itself. It doesn’t seem to matter that the lyrics are incomprehensible because of Snow’s rapid-fire Jamaican patois – in what is reggae’s answer to rap. (The video, he points out, has the words typed out across the bottom.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Jamaican influence is from “Jamaicans who lived in my neighborhood,” a working-class area of Toronto, he says. “They’re my friends. We’re all cool.”<\/p>\n
Growing up, he fantasized a lot. “I was Bruce Lee when I was a kid. I was Kiss. I was everybody.”<\/p>\n
Then he became Snow. Informer is a hit, he says, because it’s “catchy.”<\/p>\n
He wrote it when he was in jail. He’s done time twice: once for attempted murder and once for assault.<\/p>\n
What was jail like?<\/p>\n
“It’s not worth being there. It’s sick and boring.”<\/p>\n
That could be partly why his stuff isn’t encouraging violence or seething with rage.<\/p>\n
“I don’t support all that gangster stuff,” says Snow. “I just do my own stuff.”<\/p>\n
He tells kids to stay clean.<\/p>\n
“I preach to ’em. I always tell ’em to go to school.”<\/p>\n
Did you?<\/p>\n
“Nah. It wasn’t really for me. I just didn’t get along with it.”<\/p>\n
When did he drop out?<\/p>\n
“Grade 8. That’s the grade I finished. I went to basic 9, basic 9, basic 9, and I kept failing, failing, failing. The last grade I completed was grade 8.”<\/p>\n
How does he do his writing?<\/p>\n
“I don’t even know. My mind is like, whatever’s on my mind I just do it. We’ll be listening to the beat and then I’ll just come up with something.”<\/p>\n
Says Snow: “I can make the song in a minute. ”<\/p>\n
Next, he’s got a single coming out called Girl I’ve Been Hurt. What’s that about?<\/p>\n
“Just like, girl, I’ve been hurt. Now I need another lover,” he explains, speaking the lyrics.<\/p>\n
Have you been hurt?<\/p>\n
“Only about 10 times.”<\/p>\n
And has life changed for the rapper? Definitely different.<\/p>\n
“A lot more friends.”<\/p>\n
And how about fame and fortune?<\/p>\n
“Cool.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life according to Snow: “I don’t have to be nothing I don’t want to be.” And who is Snow? A white, Irish, Canadian-born, 23-year-old dance hall rapper who’s responsible for Informer, the No. 1 single on the Billboard charts for the past three weeks. Being white in a black-dominated rap world is no problem, he […]<\/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":[12,11,7,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29"}],"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=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dsnow.co.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}