On a trip to New York, Prince was able to pitch Snow's music to rap star M.C. While he was in jail, he went to school and wrote music, which he performed for fellow inmates. Rather than tell authorities who the perpetrator was, Snow served eight months in jail before a jury acquitted him on both counts. Other people in the group pointed the finger at him, and he was charged with two counts of attempted murder. In 1988, Snow was involved in an incident at a North York pub, in which two people were stabbed. Prince, who would claim that he helped Snow refine his reggae singing and use of the Jamaican dialect, and that he came up with the name 'Snow', told the Los Angeles Times that they passed around a lot of tapes but couldn't get Snow signed because he was white. For the next few years, they practiced in Prince's basement, and played parties, with Snow providing vocals and Prince playing records. Upon his release in January 1988, the Jamaican-born DJ Marvin Prince saw O'Brien deejaying at a party and the two became friends. In 1987, Snow served eight months of a one-year sentence after pleading guilty to beating a person with a crowbar during a bar brawl. He developed his own style of music, by blending Dancehall and Reggae with rock and Pop music. As he was growing up, he had a strong interest in rock music but, in 1983, there was an influx of Jamaican immigrants to the neighborhood, his interest turned to reggae music and he became adept at the use of the Jamaican dialect, or Jamaican Patois. He never learned to read properly and dropped out of school while in the 9th grade. Following his parents' divorce, he was raised by his mother in the Allenbury Gardens public housing project where, he says, he was fascinated with the gangster lifestyle, fell in with a tough Irish-Canadian group and became involved in a cycle of fighting, drinking and stealing. Snow was born and raised in the North York district of Toronto, one of four children born to an Irish-Canadian cabdriver and a homemaker. 4 Legal disputes over production of 12 Inches of Snow.