known professionally as bbno$ (pronounced "baby no money"), is a Canadian rapper, singer, and songwriter. He is best known for his 2019 single, "Lalala" (with Y2K), which peaked at number ten on the Canadian Hot 100, as well as his collaborations with American rapper Yung Gravy.
Gumuchian was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, to an Armenian father and Swiss-Danish mother. He was homeschooled before he began high school. While growing up, his mother had encouraged him to learn piano, but he had always struggled with music theory. Gumuchian claims that he was good with rhythm and that he enjoyed playing the djembe, but did not listen to music for recreation until the age of 15.
Gumuchian started working with music after experiencing a back injury which prevented him from pursuing his dream as a professional swimmer. He became interested in rapping and music production in 2014 when experimenting on GarageBand with a group of friends. Gumuchian began simply making music for enjoyment with this group of friends who later deemed themselves Broke Boy Gang.After five or six months of performing live as a group and releasing multiple tracks online, the group broke up. He began posting tracks on SoundCloud in September 2016 under the moniker of "bbnomula" where he quickly gained millions of streams and followers. He gained popularity in China where he sold out his first few "back-to-back" headlining tours. He credited his overseas popularity to the Chinese dance crew TFBoys, after one of the members, Jackson Yee, danced to the track "Yoyo Tokyo" at his own birthday party.
bbno$ has described his own music as "oxymoronic rap" that is "ignorant but melodic". bbno$ grew up listening to straight bass dubstep and house music from names like Datsik and Excision, before listening to hip hop artists, namely Tupac Shakur, Gucci Mane, and Chief Keef. He has cited Yung Lean and Pouya as his main inspirations as a rapper.
