Rejie Snow’s New Single, “Cookie Chips” Featuring MF DOOM & Cam O’bi Is a Yearning for Childhood Nostalgia

Rejie Snow has come out his hiatus and emerges carrying a bouquet of balloons –  rapping about sunshine, Pokémon cards, and butterflies. Snow is an Irish artist, one of the few rappers to come onto the scene, representing Dublin to the fullest.

Snow has not dropped any new music since his 2018 album, “Dear Annie,” whose cover art and sound still reflect a sense of childhood wonder and curiosity. It makes sense now more than ever that Snow would want to fully hibernate and marinate in his ability to create and live in the dream world that he paints in his songs.

The beat of “Cookie Chips” mirrors the feelings and images that arise when looking through a kaleidoscope – magical, dripped in the essence of rainbows. The tone of this single is like a slow dream, and the synthesizer utilized unearths a sense of nostalgia of the sunshine that takes place right before the storm – the presence of the childhood innocence we all lose is being mourned in this song.

Snow’s voice alone possesses an angelic, restlessness that’s evident in his tone. To balance out his hazy vision for the single is featured rappers MF DOOM and Cam O’bi. MF DOOM has always been an MC whose voice grips the bars with a more rough, gritty demeanor. DOOM also is known to pair that aggressive energy that he delivers and balance it out with a fantastical, lucid instrumental.

This is why Snow and Doom complement one another so much on this track – a balance of purity and the revelation of darkness is being restored, sins uncovered like a tombstone.

Cam O’bi happens to be the monkey in the middle, the teeter-totter to this child-hood dreamland that Snow is creating. O’bi is a Chicago native, his flow is incredibly melodic. He carries within him an energy that is soft and gentle yet remains incredibly powerful. O’bi brings the grey area to this single with his ability to see the shadows lurking from the sun’s rays. He must have been one of those kids growing up who was able to grasp the reality of the adult world at a very young age. Still, he chooses like Snow to nourish his nostalgia for being a kid again.

He raps, “Sticky like the rain in the summer. Twilight in my blunt and I’m gone flyin’, way up high where the kites stream away. Cloudy in my truck, sitting dumb high. I know I’m gonna see the golden light of day.” 

While Snow clings to the blindness of the sun and Doom lingers in the depths of darkness – O’bi is shielding the sun from his eyes while acknowledging the rain that will inevitably pour down. Then, Doom sweeps in with the crushing presence of reality. 

He raps, “Dumb lust overflowing in love stuff hush. Heart crushed like a bag of dust, bum rush. Black beanie, freak out a night like Whodini.”

Doom delivers the doomsday alert, the bearer of bad news but, also of truth. He contemplates on how the cloudiness of lust and love inevitably carries the prospect of heartbreak along with it. Doom is illuminating the “what goes up must come down” theory. He is again referencing this metaphor of a balloon that Snow is also meditating on – when you’re riding on a high it must ultimately be met with the lows.

This song is an ode to childhood innocence and the nostalgia of freedom that it ensues. Snow dropped the music video to accompany this single. It features him gripping the infamous bouquet of balloons while wearing bunny ears on top of his head, frolicking in the grass. 

Throughout the video, images of the colorful balloons being released into the blue sky, kissing the clouds are shown. It’s as if, while Snow takes a walk down memory lane and as he enters the forest in the video – he is releasing bit by bit his need to cling to his rose-colored glasses. He enters the woods, and cannot unsee the danger and deception that it brings. This video is evoking some strong symbolism, giving a nod to all of the childhood fables we are read to as kids.

Isn’t the woods always the place where kids go for escapism but are instead met with the force of the wicked? The woods always seems to be the meeting spot, where kids are stripped of their childhood innocence.  I can’t help but picture – Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, and Hansel and Gretel singing along to “Cookie Chips” in solidarity. Listen to Cookie Chips, and get lost in this dream world of nostalgia, but don’t be too crushed by the grieving of innocence that Snow is also illuminating. 

The loss of something doesn’t mean it is gone forever, with it comes the prospect of re-birth. As snow raps, “I can fly, I’m a dove, I’m a butterfly. I’m a butterfly, yo f***.”