Rapper and songwriter bbno$ will headline the Spring Fling concert on April 27, All Campus Entertainment (ACE) announced at the end of its Battle of the Bands event on Feb. 16. bbno$ (pronounced “baby no money”) will join a series of well-known performers who have headlined the annual concert in recent years, including Sammy Rae & The Friends, Princess Nokia, Chelsea Cutler, and A Boogie wit da Hoodie.
Battle of the Bands saw six student musical acts compete to open the Spring Fling concert. Following the last student performance, students voted for their favorite band, and the three bands with the most votes — Desert Gothic, Period, and Space Bar — won a spot to open for bbno$ at Spring Fling.
ACE’s Battle of the Bands event and the celebratory unveiling of the headline at the end differed from years past. In 2023, ACE hosted a shorter Battle of the Bands immediately before the headlining artist’s Spring Fling set and announced the headlining artist in an all-campus email on Feb. 27, 2023. This year, ACE organized a separate event to offer more time dedicated to student performers and increase the fanfare over the in-person artist announcement, the ACE concert planning team wrote in an email to the Record.
In October, ACE began organizing Spring Fling by sending out a Google Form to the student body asking for feasible artist suggestions for the headline slot — what the organization defined as artists with between 500,000 to 4 million monthly listeners on Spotify. The Google Form received 342 responses, from which ACE and Associate General Counsel Laura Gura narrowed options down to 11 artists, the ACE concert planning team wrote in an email to the Record. In early December, ACE sent another campus-wide form asking students to rank their five preferred artists, which received nearly 750 student responses, the planning team wrote. From the response, ACE started reaching out to potential artists.
While ACE did not disclose which artist received the most votes, they emphasized that they did their best to reflect student artist and genre preferences. “Based on student preference, artist availability, and funding, we came to a final decision and were happy to get such a great offer from bbno$’s team,” the ACE concert planning team wrote in an email to the Record. “We’re so excited that the artist for Spring Fling is bbno$ — students were very enthusiastic about him in the form, and we know he will bring a fun show.”
bbno$, whose full name is Alexander Leon Gumuchian, began to gain popularity through SoundCloud in 2016. He is perhaps best-known for his 2019 song “Lalala,” which features Y2K and went viral on TikTok, as well as frequent collaborations with rapper Yung Gravy.
ACE noted that bbno$ — who has 9.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify — exceeded its expectations for the popularity Spring Fling headliner. “bbno$ has a significantly higher number of monthly listeners than we were originally expecting to be able to secure as our artist, so we are super lucky to have him,” the planning team wrote.
Students have expressed their excitement about the artist announcement. “I listened to bbno$ a lot in high school, so I’m definitely excited to see him perform live, and I think he’ll bring the right type of energy to Spring Fling as his songs are pretty fast-paced,” Josh Rubel ’26 wrote in an email to the Record.
However, some students were less excited about the announcement. “I had no idea who that was until the form came out,” Joseph Gallegos ’27 wrote to the Record. “After I looked him up, I didn’t really care for him, and I think there were definitely better options on the form. It makes me a little less excited for Spring Fling.”
Still, ACE is enthusiastic about the decision. “The process this year exceeded our expectations and we can’t wait to have a great show,” the team wrote.
[Editor’s note: Emily Zas, who is a member of the editorial board and co-president of ACE, was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.]
