When I popped off: BBno$ concert review
BY carly dipirro
“Bee-bee-n-o dollar sign? What does that mean?” These were frequently asked questions across the student body last week. Maybe you’re even asking yourself the same things right now. Pronounced “baby no money,” this Canadian rapper popped off at Prochnow Friday night, following an unexpected yet entertaining performance by Phoenix duo Mouse Powell.
The audience didn't know what they were getting themselves into when Sun Entertainment introduced a rap duo called “Mouse Powell” and we saw their setup, which consisted of a laptop, a simple mix board, a trumpet, and a quite complicated standing keyboard. This confusion only grew deeper when we saw what the talent was wearing; one guy donned a full Raiders sweatsuit, while the other wore shorts and an open button-up with loud patterns, and socks and a hat with loud symbols (if you catch my drift). When they hit the stage, we were surprisingly impressed with the way that they blended rap, emotions, and jazzy-sounding tracks. Post-show, I even went to their Spotify and listened to my favorite song of theirs, “Backslidin’”. Though finding information about Mouse Powell on the internet was, quite literally, a mouse hunt, I thought that they were a very fitting and entertaining opener for bbno$.
Alexander Leon Gumuchian, better known as bbno$, is best known for his single “Lalala” with producer Y2K, and his collaborations with fellow rapper, Yung Gravy. That being said, he did a fantastic show standing on his own. Well, almost on his own, that is. He was accompanied on stage by his track spinner and hype-man, DJ Dan. In addition, after inviting Yung Gravy on stage (who, unfortunately, was not able to attend), he instead invited an audience member who knew the lyrics to a few of their collabs to “play Yung Gravy” onstage. This student did an incredible job, not only rocking Yung Gravy’s parts, but taking over bbno$’s as well.
Inviting a student onto the stage wasn’t the only unexpected thing that bbno$ did at his show. At the beginning of his act, he introduced a cookbook to the audience and told us that he would give it to whoever was the most hyped during the show. At one point, he threw vegetables into the audience: zucchini, bell peppers, and eggplants. bbno$ is the king of collaborations, which means when he’s doing a solo concert, he does not have a ton of music to play by himself. As a solution, he played a few common party songs by other artists and just jammed out to them with the rest of us. Needless to say, bbno$ is an incredibly high-energy performer, which brought up the audience’s energy level, despite the fact that we are all exhausted college students and half of the audience didn’t even know who bbno$ was prior to the show. If there is one thing that the bbno$ concert proved, it is that performers do not need the complex sets that we so frequently see at the concerts of more popular artists, such as Panic! At the Disco and Machine Gun Kelly, in order to rock the house.
