He\u2019s the artist who has record labels scratching their heads by reaching the fans they wish they could, right where they live: on the internet. He\u2019s also someone who describes his live show as \u201cthe dumbest thing I\u2019ve ever seen in my life\u201d and means it as high self-praise.<\/p>\n
But for the 30-year-old Vancouver native, the tougher question is: who is Alex Gumuchian?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fine line,\u201d he says, speaking over Tibetan momos at Loga\u2019s Corner in Toronto. \u201cI use bbno$ as an avenue to be the most extravagant self I want Alex to be on a regular basis, but I can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
His music has helped him find his voice and his confidence. Now, he\u2019s focused on figuring out the man behind it.<\/p>\n
bbno$ (pronounced \u201cbaby no money\u201d not bibinos) is currently on the Internet Explorer Tour, his biggest-ever global tour on the heels of his self-titled 2025 album that hit No. 33 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart and spawned the hit \u201ccheck,\u201d which took over the airwaves and landed at No. 50 on the 2025 Year-End Billboard Canada Radio Songs Chart<\/a>. A bbno$ show is a high-energy and unpredictable event, filled with memes, costumes, props and laser dicks. It\u2019s also extremely supportive, a space for fans to be their weirdest selves and bond over brain rot. It\u2019s like a non-toxic version of the internet come to life.<\/p>\n For Gumuchian, that\u2019s important. Online is where he found community as a homeschooled child in B.C.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of like my main friend,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI played World of Warcraft for years, and I met so many people that way. I fell in love with how much community there is [online]. The most important thing for me is distilling that for people who enjoy positivity and want to have fun, because there’s so much of the opposite in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, he sees a lot of himself in his fans. He wants the community around bbno$ to be what the internet has been to him: a place for people who can express themselves freely no matter how insecure they might be outside of the fandom.<\/p>\n bbno$ is embedded in the cosplay community, and so are many of his fans. He\u2019s also a major supporter of drag as an art form. He featured Priyanka and other performers from Canada\u2019s Drag Race onstage at the Junos for his performance of \u201cIt Boy\u201d in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n This year, he couldn\u2019t attend the Junos, but sent Priyanka in his place alongside a bbno$ cosplayer named Baby Joe Money who she led through the red carpet on a leash. She was supposed to accept the Fan Choice award for him if he won it, but he soon learned that the Junos doesn\u2019t let you send others to accept in absentia so he watched from his tour stop in Iowa as presenters Majid Jordan accepted it instead.<\/p>\n Still, he\u2019s happy he won the award for the second time. Operating on his own strange frequency, he\u2019s not used to receiving that kind of industry recognition, but the Fan Choice is the only award chosen entirely by vote, which is the kind of accolade he does care about.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the only democratic vote,\u201d he says. \u201cSo, modestly speaking, I won the whole Junos.\u201d<\/p>\n Gumuchian dabbles in drag himself. His first dalliance was for the 2020 video for \u201cImma\u201d<\/a> with first season Canada\u2019s Drag Race star Jimbo, who he now calls his drag mother.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was the moment I was like, \u2018this is f\u2013ing awesome,’\u201d he exclaims. \u201cI walked into Starbucks to get a coffee and the barista gave it to me for free. I was like \u2018this is the coolest I\u2019ve ever felt in my life.’\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201cextravagant beauty\u201d his drag self opened him up to \u201cbeing my more extravagant self,\u201d he says, and he\u2019s since done it again in videos like \u201cYoga\u201d with Rebecca Black and the more recent \u201cNSFW,\u201d again with Jimbo. Jimbo said he was the only person in the world she was fine with doing drag with a beard, and patiently answered all his questions about tucking.<\/p>\n Though he\u2019s sometimes received accusations of \u201cqueerbaiting,\u201d Gumuchian is a big supporter of LGBTQ+ causes. At the second edition Baby’s Bonanza, his hometown self-funded fundraiser festival in Vancouver, which raised more than $125,000 for the Downtown Eastside Women\u2019s Centre, he led a chant of \u201cprotect them dolls,\u201d supporting trans rights at a precarious time in the U.S. and throughout the world. The phrase is also a rallying cry in his Kreayshawn-sampling song \u201cbing bong.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Maybe because of the tongue-in-cheek silliness of his music, people are sometimes surprised when Gumuchian uses his platform for serious causes. But he doesn\u2019t see the two things as contradictory in any way.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I can be a support for marginalized communities, why the f\u2013 wouldn\u2019t I?\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in a very loving household, which is a privilege. Now, I will be a beacon of love and hope for my fans, and ride to Mordor and back \u2014 Lord of the Rings reference,\u201d he says (yes, the last part too). \u201cI was homeschooled and I grew up in Vancouver, so I was pretty tied to the ground and nature and the earth and a lot of hippie stuff. I grew up wanting to help people. I wanted to be a doctor. But I feel like I\u2019ve helped infinitely more people than I could have helped [as a doctor] with music.\u201d<\/p>\n Because of his support for the LGBTQ community, some of his online fans have openly speculated about his own sexuality. There are whole Reddit threads dedicated to discussing whether he\u2019s straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, or even if he\u2019s a top or bottom.<\/p>\n When asked about it in interviews, he typically deflects with a joke or makes a bigger point about toxic masculinity.<\/p>\n Over dumplings now, he says his answer isn\u2019t so cut and dry. He doesn\u2019t want to label himself, not because he doesn’t like labels, but because he\u2019s still figuring it out for himself. All of his relationships have been with women, but that doesn’t necessarily define him now.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t know,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In typical bbno$ style, he answers the question by taking it in a whole different direction.<\/p>\n “I’m 30 years old and I did a copious amount of mushrooms a couple months ago,” he says, waiting for my follow up question. “I had feelings and thoughts I never had before.\u201d<\/p>\n What those thoughts mean, he doesn’t know yet. What he does know is that the expectations for sexuality as a young single musician don’t seem to fit him.<\/p>\n When he first started touring with Yung Gravy in 2017, he saw his friend and fellow rapper hooking up with women wherever they went. He thought that was what you\u2019re supposed to do on the road, so he tried to get into the spirit too. But he found he was much happier between shows hanging out and playing video games.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes I\u2019ve even thought I\u2019m asexual,\u201d he says. \u201cMost of my relationships historically have ended because I\u2026 I’m not the most intimate individual.\u201d<\/p>\n He hasn’t had time to work on himself, he says, because he’s had such success in music. That\u2019s taken up most of his attention for the better part of a decade. Though the music is often light and funny, he takes it very seriously. His empire is built by a combo of business savvy and hyperfocus.<\/p>\n Despite his somewhat granola Vancouver homeschooled upbringing, Gumuchian is the son of first-generation immigrant parents \u2014 an Armenian father from Egypt and a Danish-Swiss mother \u2014 and he says it instilled a \u201cbag or die\u201d work ethic.<\/p>\n bbno$ is an independent project, and Gumuchian is involved in every aspect. He even personally signs off on every invoice.<\/p>\n There was a time when big labels were trying to sign him. In 2019, his endlessly catchy single \u201cLalala\u201d<\/a> with producer Y2K was going viral and charting on the Billboard Hot 100. It cracked the top 10 of the Canadian Hot 100 and charted in high spots in countries like Australia, Hungary and Lebanon.<\/p>\n Gumuchian took every label meal that was offered \u2014 mostly because he wanted to eat for free \u2014 but often left with a bad taste in his mouth. Executives would clearly misunderstand his music, sometimes asking questions like whose vocals were on the song, clearly attracted solely by the view counts.<\/p>\n He remembers one meeting with Island Records, he says, where someone leaned in next to his ear and told him he has a lot of leverage. \u201cI stood up and started laughing at him. That made me so uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n A couple of years later, \u201cEdamame,\u201d another viral bbno$ track with Rich Brian, was gaining momentum in the Baltics. Gumuchian signed a deal with a marketing and digital strategy company to try to capitalize. The company spent $71,000 on TikTok promotion and it resulted in 12 million views. A video he posted with his ex-girlfriend putting a filter on his face got 21 million.<\/p>\n It feels like he instinctively just gets the internet, but there\u2019s both strategy and brute force behind his online success.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just about putting out a hooky song that people will use for their own TikTok videos (creates), but finding the specific clip or timestamp that will catch the algorithm. He and his small team of content creators have all sorts of strategies for making that happen, like posting ideas and skits and clips underneath a song, then using their main idea after they\u2019re all deployed to give every clip a boost. Artists pay digital marketing firms big money to deploy strategies like these<\/a>, but Gumuchian likes to think he can do it better himself.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes we\u2019re just getting lucky, but a lot of the time we are putting a lot of thought into it,\u201d he explains. \u201cIs it working to the nth degree and I\u2019m Taylor Swift now? No. But it’s clearly not, not working.\u201d<\/p>\n Gumuchian loves digging into the analytics, seeing where his most active listeners live, where he should tour, which songs are hitting people. He\u2019ll break it down into parts. Is there a certain bass sound that is resonating? When he posts a song on SoundCloud, which moments of the song are people commenting on? He\u2019ll look at at it atomically, seeing which parts of his music fans are responding to and then save it for later.<\/p>\n \u201cThen when I want to make another song, I know it will guarantee to pop off,\u201d he deadpans. \u201cI just take every single aspect of every single song that I’ve ever made and just put it all on one song. It\u2019s a cheat code.\u201c<\/p>\n![\"bbno$.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/bbno-coach-shirt-and-jeans.png\")
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