bbno$ :: my oh my

It has been clear since my first time checking out bbno$ (baby no money) that he doesn’t take his success too seriously. That’s not all bad. A lot of rappers walk around with a stick up their ass wanting you to respect their swag, their ride, their bankroll, and their street cred. As a Canadian rapper from Vancouver whose childhood aspiration was to be a pro swimmer, you probably couldn’t claim to be a G from the streets with any level of plausibility. Now given the way his music ultimately went viral on almost all forms of social media, the “no money” part of his name probably doesn’t make sense any more, but I still don’t feel like he’s trying to prove he’s a big shot when I watch and listen to “help herself.” In fact the very first lines are “Down on myself, hope you’re doing well/I’ve been honestly going through hell.” Well then.

Now to be fair the clothes he wore for this video shoot probably cost more than I’ll make in an entire year (I know nothing about fashion but just look at the way the jacket and pants coordinate together in the thumbnail) but he’s still not drowning his attire in excessive layers of gold and diamonds. Good on you sir. Just because you have it doesn’t mean you have to flaunt it… oh wait. I guess you can’t say he never does. “my oh my” is an extended play but has enough run time for him to “talk money money money” on the track “bad to the bone.” I suppose that would be fine if the minimalistic instrumental didn’t wind up sounding like a parody of Pharrell — not a good parody either.

Owing to how short this release was bbno$ also had time to make a video for every single on it, so there was no shortage of material to embed in this review. The one I find the most interesting musically is the dwilly produced “sorry,” which pulls off a nice mood and tempo change after the first hook, while the video shows bbno$ running behind the camera trying to keep up (hilariously a police car rolls through the background of the shoot). It looks like the kind of music video a three man crew could film with an iPhone and a nice rig to hold it steady, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

I don’t think bbno$ went places with “my oh my” that were too far off brand for him or his fanbase. I also can’t give him excessive credit for that given he has even more white privilege than most white rappers, and his tendency to sing leaves me a little nonplussed. At least it seems to genuinely be his own voice and not a bunch of post session studio manipulations, but he’s not exactly the guy you’d pick to win a singing contest. I’m not either, but I’m also not a famous rap artist. Anyway for a self-described “oxymoronic rapper” who has released albums with titles like “I Don’t Care at All,” I get it. Like so many artists of his generation he was born into a broken world that left them feeling despondent and depressed, so if making oxymoronic rap music helps, more power to him.