Charlamagne tha God Points To Snow’s ‘Informer’: “This Is What The Game Is Missing”
Charlamagne tha God, leading man for Power 105’s The Breakfast Club, recently suggested that music is missing a certain ‘vibe’ and songs like Snow’s Platinum-certified hit Informer are what’s needed to restore the “feeling.”
His Instagram post on Wednesday – a meme featuring a still shot of Snow from the Informer music video – praised the Canadian Reggae fusion rapper and even referred to him as a legend.
“Legend. Still got the streets in a chokehold if you ask me. This is what the game is missing. Who amongst us can restore the feeling??? Let’s discuss,” Charlamagne wrote.
Widely established as one of the best-selling Reggae and Dancehall singles of all time, Informer was a near-perfect storm of talent, timing, and opportunity. Novelty, as well, played a part in the single’s success.
Following Vanilla Ice, there hadn’t been a white man to quite reap the success he had in a black-dominated space. Not until Snow – a fast-rapping, patois-talking, goofy-looking convicted gangster.
What started off as a gimmick for the Canadian native, who merely mimicked the sound of Jamaican artists at block parties, proved a fruitful endeavor in the long run, with tracks like Informer and Anything For You reaping wild commercial success.
Save for its upbeat and up-tempo delivery about Snow’s disdain for ‘Informers’ or ‘Snitches’ – a worn-out sentiment to be found especially in early Dancehall, the song wasn’t a particularly ground-breaking project, at least not in any technical sense.
It sampled The Winstons’ Amen, Brother (1969) and the Commodores’ The Assembly Line (1974), but derived much of its charm from Snow’s confident yet noticeably novice slinging of Jamaican patois.
Interestingly, it was while serving time in prison, that the rapper got word that the music he had recorded was being released in the US in 1993.
Not long after, following a phone call one day, he was told that the video for Informer was being shown on Rap City, the day’s equivalent of BET 106 and Park. Snow insisted that his video, which was shot before he pled guilty to beating someone with a crowbar, was not out yet and feared he may have been mistaken for Vanilla Ice or some other white rapper.
That weekend, however, after Movie Night in prison, Snow saw his video for Informer for the first time behind bars, and pretty much became a celebrity in prison because of it. “I got out of prison to a limousine and by then, the song was number one in the world and on the Billboard chart,” Snow recalled during a sit-down with DJ Vlad on Vlad TV last year.
The song spent 25 weeks on the Billboard chart, seven of which were spent at No. 1. It was certified Platinum in the United States, back in 1993.
12 Inches of Snow, which also featured Loneley Monday Morning, Girl I’ve Been Hurt, and Lady With The Red Dress, peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, spending a total of 38 weeks on that chart.
In 2019, Informer was sampled in Daddy Yankee’s monster hit Con Calma, which featured freshly recorded verses from Snow himself.
“I wanted to pay tribute to the classic,” Daddy Yankee told Rolling Stone, “and the best way to do that was to bring the man who made it.”
Con Calma, which has over 2.6 billion views on YouTube, peaked at No. 22 on the Hot 100 and also spent 25 weeks on the chart.