It would be hard for anyone at the College to miss the excitement of giant inflatables, food trucks, and loud music that radiated from Science Quad last Saturday. Rapper bbno$ headlined the event — All Campus Entertainment (ACE)’s Spring Fling concert — which also featured performances by several student bands.
ACE worked with the Office of Campus Life (OCL) and Residential Team Leadership (RLT) to plan the event, which included selecting an artist based on student suggestions, sourcing food trucks, organizing the performances, hiring the production company, and scheduling the big day.
Last year, Sammy Rae & The Friends headlined the concert, marking the second consecutive year the College has hosted a well-known performing artist for the event after the tradition was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Student Involvement and Events Assistant Trevor Biggs, ACE’s staff advisor, found negotiating bbno$’s contract to be the most challenging part of planning the event. “It was a lot of back and forth with nitpicky things within the artist’s contract, as well as within our own that his team had issues with,” he wrote in an email to the Record. “We worked with the College’s legal team to navigate this part as well, as there were some pieces in there that needed more delicate consideration.”
As students lined up for food trucks and inflatable slides, the concert began with performances from student bands Desert Gothic, Period, and Space Bar. These bands were selected by a vote at the Battle of the Bands event in February, which was the first time ACE hosted a separate event to decide who would perform at Spring Fling. Based on online votes after all three bands performed on Saturday, Space Bar was chosen to perform an encore before bbno$ took the stage.
A highlight for one of Space Bar’s vocalists Katherine Bai ’26 was the band’s Katy Perry medley. “I loved seeing the audience’s faces grow more and more ecstatic as we transitioned from one Katy Perry classic to the next,” she wrote to the Record. “It’s always a fun time bringing people together with music, and I think it’s even more special that student groups were able to be the ones to do that.”
ACE Presidents Emily Zas ’25 and Maddie Menon ’25 noted the importance of including student music at Spring Fling in a joint statement to the Record. “We really wanted to highlight the incredible talent of the student bands on campus,” they wrote. “We don’t often get organized opportunities to enjoy student band performances, and Spring Fling gives them a platform to showcase their amazing musical abilities.” (Emily Zas, executive editor for features, was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.)
After the student performances, bbno$ took the stage. He performed many of his most popular songs, including “edamame,” “C’est la vie,” and “shinin on my ex.” He also repeatedly interacted with the crowd of students — eating a croissant tossed by one student and wearing the hat of another.
“bbno$ was just a great entertainer, so he played off the crowd well,” longtime fan Josh Rubel ’26 wrote to the Record. “My favorite part was absolutely him taking my hat and wearing it for most of the performance.”
Traditionally, bbno$ gives a signed cookbook to one fan at each of his shows. In an interview with the Record, the artist discussed his tradition, which originated at one of his first shows in Tennessee after he finished university. “I remember the reaction of me giving out a cookbook for no reason,” he said. “It was so stupid and ridiculous, and I was like, ‘Woah this worked.’” For bbno$, giving away a cookbook is a must-do. “I will not perform unless I get a cookbook,” he added.
Lila Goldstein ’26 was the lucky recepient of the cookbook at Spring Fling. “I knew that, at every bbno$ show, he gives away a cookbook to one fan and he signs it,” she told the Record. “So I knew that was gonna happen, but I did not go into the day expecting that would end up being me.”
bbno$ rose to virality through promotion of his triple-platinum hit single, “Lalala,” with artist Y2K following the initial success of his single “who dat boi.” For bbno$, these periods of success and heightened attention have led to career-defining opportunities where he has carved out a name for himself. “It democratizes the music industry quite a bit because you can spend as much money as you possibly can from a label, but the song might not go,” he said.
When bbno$ played “Lalala” during his Spring Fling set, the song was met by excitement and lip-syncing from students. “‘Lalala’ hit astronomically hard, and then that kind of elevated everything in my career,” he said of the song’s success. “That was probably the first one that made a major difference in my life.”
Towards the end of bbno$’s set, special student guest Obi Nwako ’24 joined him onstage to rap verses by Yung Gravy, who is featured on several of bbno$’s biggest hits. Seventy students responded to a form to express interest in performing with bbno$, and 10 were randomly selected to submit auditions. ACE board then reviewed the auditions and selected Nwako. bbno$ and Nwako performed “Welcome to Chili’s” and “Whip A Tesla” together.
“It was so nerve-wracking right until I got on stage, and then it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” Nwako wrote to the Record. “It felt great seeing people I knew in the crowd who were gonna hype me up no matter what happened, and it was also fun messing around on stage with him.”
“It seemed that with each performance, the energy of the crowd increased significantly,” Biggs added. “Seeing the joy from students at the event made it all worth it.”
To Goldstein, the sense of community and energy during the concert made Spring Fling a day to remember. “Even if you didn’t know all the words, he was a fun performer,” she said. “It was really entertaining and felt very different than any other day in Williamstown. It was fun to see campus come together for something that’s not sports or academic related. It was a very natural social space that was inclusive for everybody and that was really cool to be part of.”
