Daddy Yankee Storms Global Charts With Snow

By David Farrell

Latino superstar Daddy Yankee has topped global iTunes charts and racked up more than 30-million views on his Jan. 23 clip for “Con Calma,” a dancehall bump-and-grind Spanish cover of Snow’s 1992 “Informer” reggae hit.

Written by Snow, M.C. Shan, Edmond Leary, Shawn and Terri Moltke, with Jeffrey Silva, “Informer” was the lead single from Snow’s debut 12 Inches of Snow album, which sold over 8M records worldwide and is certified RIAA Platinum in the US and CRIA Triple Platinum in Canada. Listed as one of VH1’s Greatest Songs of the ’90s, “Informer” spent seven consecutive weeks at #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 Chart, securing the #28 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 decade-end chart (1990-1999).

 Daddy Yankee’s amorous and rhythmic rendition (El Cartel Records/UMC) features the Canadian reggae rapper who also makes a cameo appearance in the video from a pay phone booth in Toronto.

The cover is part of a global strategy to reintroduce the Canadian reggae rapper on the charts by manager Paul Farberman, a Canadian lawyer who for long worked with Celine Dion's global management team.

Speaking from LA, Farberman says he is too old to be managing new artists but fell in love with Snow’s vision and sound when the two met in 2017. Since then they have been working on sorting out legal encumbrances and devising a comeback, in part with a new Warner Chappell Music publishing deal, and in working with New Jersey-based Radikal Records and Roton Music in Rumania to release an “Informer” remix series.

“The Daddy Yankee cover is blowing up worldwide,” Farberman enthuses, and he wants us all to be informed of this fact. “There’s talk of Snow going on tour with Daddy Yankee later this year," he reports, adding that "Darrin is in Toronto right now recording new material and I’m taking calls from all interested record companies before we make any new deals.”

Daddy Yankee is equally enthralled with Darrin O'Brien aka Snow: "It was one of my favourite songs growing up, and to do this the right way I needed the guy to be on the record,” Yankee says of his new single. "You got to give honour to a classic in order to make a new version of it, and once I showed it to him, he said, ‘Wow, it’s amazing. I’ll 100% be on the song.’ So you have a Canadian and a Puerto Rican making Jamaican music. Two pioneers, two people pushing the cultures.”

– Paul Farberman can be reached by email at paulfarberman@gmail.com