In the 1990s, rap became mainstream. The genre, pioneered by Black men in New York and LA, had broken out of basement studios and underground concerts and into radio stations, record stores, and MTV. Rap still maintained its image, but with the rise of white listeners, the question was to be asked. Can original listeners keep it to themselves forever?
They couldn’t.
As rap’s popularity rose, its authenticity fell. 30 years later, the ultimate symbol of this degeneration would appear.
BBNO$ (pronounced “baby no money”) is a ‘rapper’ that got his start on TikTok in late 2019 but wouldn’t transform into the corn ball we know today until around 2023. To promote the exhausting slop he calls music, he started to post more, allegedly, ironic videos. He appealed to fandom culture with cosplays, Hatsune Miku features on his so-called songs, and commissioning art. He did everything possible to position himself as some swaggy nerd.
While gaining meme status in 2024-25, another meme was on the rise, one he embodied perfectly:
The performative male.
For those not in the know, the performative male stereotype is a meme satirizing sleazy, faux feminist, Gen Z men. You might see one drinking matcha, listening to Clairo or Lana del Rey, reading bell hooks in the park, or hitting on the alt barista at the local coffee shops.
Who fits his phony phenotype more than one BBNO$ himself?
He checked all the boxes, he was ostensibly left wing, he loved to thirst trap, and he had stupid hair. His songs also played into that kind of vibe, positioning himself as a kind of ‘gigolo,’ a heterosexual(ish) sex symbol fully disconnected from the cultural conception of gendered desire. In other words, he wants to be seen as a kind of woke player. The end goal of every performative male, to get some.
But what’s the public reaction? People are split online, but love him or hate him, most agree on one thing.
His music sucks.
The most common defense you will see of BBNO$ is “his music might not be good, but it’s fun!” or “his music isn’t great, but he is anti-AI and commissions artists.” I’ll hand it to them. Yes, he is anti-AI, which I tend to agree with. However, he probably is anti-AI because he knows his buzzword ridden word salad could easily be replaced by any large language model.
And yes, I’m all for fun music. If you like BBNO$, more power to you! But I also don’t think something being ‘fun’ makes it immune to criticism. I’d argue that dogging on him is also incredibly fun.
Luckily, there is a light at the end of this white-rapper-shaped tunnel.
BBNO$ posted a TikTok saying, “if this video gets a million likes, I am quitting music,” and it did. As such, he is allegedly quitting music. However, there are still fears he may release something in the future. This is likely nothing more than a publicity stunt, but we can still hope.
At the end of the day, BBNO$ is harmless. But it’s sad to see what’s considered rap these days. Somewhere, between NWA and now, something (probably Eminem) changed and dulled the definition. Luckily, rap is not a dead genre, but that doesn’t make whatever BBNO$ vomits out any better.
