"He opened his mouth and starts singing Informer, Lady with the Red Dress, and I like totally dropped my chin was hanging down by my sneakers! Next day I'm like, come to my house, we gotta to start working right away!" "What happened is this guy comes walking along with his little circular glasses, like he always has." says Shan. While on bail, (between incarcerations), Snow took a trip to New York City where word got back to MC Shan that this young white suburbanite from Canada could sing reggae, but Shan wasn't too convinced. I'm on the fifth floor with big timers rocking the jailhouse!" I'm not on no petty range downstairs, or the third floor, or the fourth floor. Eighteen years old and i'm on a range with pure murderers. "I wrote Informer and got the confidence singing in jail in front of murderers. "I should be saying that I regret going to jail but I can't," he says. He was later aquitted of all murder charges after a friend confessed to the stabbing. In a seperate incident, Snow was charged with assault causing bodily harm for which he pleaded guilty and ended up also serving time in Maplehurst Correctional Centre. He was locked up in the Metro East Detention Centre where he served time before being bailed by his mother. He also mastered being a inebriated menace to society and was given two charges for attemped murder after a incident outside of a North York pub. Soon he had mastered the Jamaican patois and the miles-per-minute wordmatology of toasting the mic. I'd listen and i'd hear a word and rewind it and that's all i'd do," he remembers. "I used to get tapes that were dubbed over like 50 times before they came to me. Snow took an interest in reggae music and started listening to scratchy dub tapes and reggae artists such as Tenor Saw andNitty Gritty. One family in particular, the Browns, moved in next door and started playing reggae music all of the time. When Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau changed the immigration policies around 1983, that's when the Jamaicans started to move into the area. Listening to such artists as Kiss, Rush, and Max Webster, Snow and his then 14 year old brother used to put on rock shows, imitating their favourite bands with costumes made for them by their nanny. He grew up in the predominantly Irish neighbourhood of Allenbury Gardens, a projects in North York.Īs a child, Snow was a fan of rock n' roll. Snow was born Darrin O'Brien on the 30th October 1969 in Toronto, Canada.