Much to the relief of a certain gaggle of terminally online tweens, straight-to-TikTok artist bbno$ (pronounced “baby no money”) is finally back from his protracted sabbatical of roughly 28 days, bringing a new song (“diamonds are forever”) with him. Honestly, this isn’t much of a surprise, considering I was skeptical of his “goodbye” post the second I read it: retiring is one thing; saying you’re retiring because you, newly defeated, want to give your 14 million monthly listeners what they’ve been supposedly clamoring for (a world without your music in it) is another.
It was all very 2014 “streaks DHMU” Snapchat story-coded—and an obvious publicity stunt, to boot. I mean, isn’t his entire online persona just memes? Why did anybody take this seriously? Apparently, some outlets did, which, like…really? Either way, the fact remains that bbno$ announced on December 8 that he “made the incredibly difficult decision to stop making music for the foreseeable future.” As it turns out, he can’t see a future longer than four weeks. A rather near-sighted crystal ball, that.
I really don’t have much against bbno$ himself—his music isn’t great but it accomplishes its purpose, which is to create viral TikTok trends. So good for him, I guess. But I will say: I have grown sick and tired of retirement announcements being used as marketing ploys. Over the past few decades, it feels like artists have increasingly started announcing “retirements” the way YouTubers post “leaving the internet” videos. Jay-Z “retired” in 2003 and has since released multiple albums and toured the world. Barbra Streisand has been on so many farewell tours they may as well be a genre. Phil Collins’s “First Farewell Tour” in 2004 was followed by more music with Genesis and beyond. Even Ozzy Osbourne’s “no more tours” era came with an asterisk the size of a stadium.
In other words, bbno$ is far from the first artist to pull this kind of stunt. The difference, though, is that most acts usually wait at least a little longer than a month to come back. Have some dignity, man.
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