A licky boom-boom what?

One of the radio stations in town has been playing a song by a guy called Matisyahu, and the first time I heard it, I was certain that the early 90s one-hit-wonder Snow was attempting a comeback (Warning if you're at work: Snow's site is not silent). Apparently this Matisyahu guy is a Hasidic Jew from New York who likes to slip a little Yiddish into his reggae, but it sure sounds a whole lot like the white boy from Toronto's ghetto rap reggae of my early college years.

I was thinking perhaps the two performers are in fact the same person, and Matisyahu is just another sobriquet Darrin O'Brien is trying on for size. Apparently Mr. O'Brien is too busy with his own pseudo-career to start up another one, however...

I suspect I'm not the only one shocked to learn that Snow's 1993 release "12 Inches of Snow" was not, in fact, the last of his work. He's actually released no less than six full-length albums, one of which was a Greatest Hits compilation that--amazingly--is not simply 13 consecutive tracks of "Informer."

Who knew?

More important, who bought those other five albums? Maybe Snow is essentially the David Hasselhoff of modern reggae; maybe his answer to "you're still around?" is "I'm big in Europe." Maybe.