Live Review: bbno$

Auckland-via-Gold Coast rapper Saint Lane seems like the exact kind of act an audience passionate about tonight's headliner would be all over. He has the ironic, quasi-Lothario look down to a T. He's got the Alex Cameron meets Har Mar Superstar schtick down-pat in his shit-posting demeanour and cheap velvet suit. Not that anyone in attendance has any idea who those people are, but it's a time-honoured tradition all the same. His bars about being the man about town and a big spender are delivered with giant winks, and impressively enough too from a purely flow-based perspective. It's a perfect match... so why did the audience spend so much time shitting on the guy?

Part of it was out of his control – a faulty lead and technical difficulties lead to his beats cutting out at several points throughout his set – but away from that, there was a genuine sense he was trying his absolute hardest to warm up the audience. It was met with hostility from pockets of the crowd, who instead decided to mock the rapper. Whether it was intentionally doing the wrong call-and-response, or holding up their phones to make him think they were filming only to actually be using their phone's calculator, it felt unnecessary cruel towards a guy just trying to do his job. Given, young crowds largely have no clue how to behave at shows given they've spent the last two years mostly indoors, but this was a sour note to begin proceedings on.

Thankfully, the evening took a turn for the better once we got the man of the hour on-stage. bbno$ (say it “baby no money”) is back in Australia after two-and-a-half years, following his impressive feat of being one of the few international artists to play Australia in 2020. A bevvy of new material has ensued from the prolific comedy-rapper in the time since he last touched down, and all of it is promptly devoured by the sold-out audience – ranging from the slap-bass funk of Yoga to the Hottest 100-charting Rich Brian collab Edamame. Older favourites are also dished up, including a suite of collabs with fellow jokester Yung Gravy that were assisted by a super-fan named Zach rapping the latter's parts on-stage. If that wasn't enough, bbno$ even asked the crowd if they wanted to hear a previously-unreleased new song... only to play The Veronicas' Untouched at full blast. Naturally.

It's a set rife with goofs and gags, including the He-Man techno version of What's Up? by the 4 Non-Blondes dropping midway through and bbno$ having audience members vying for a vegan cookbook. On the note of food, we also got two giant vegetable costumes out on-stage to dance, throw veggies and eventually engage in a fist-fight. It's completely ridiculous, but perhaps one of the most surprising elements of the show is its heart. At multiple points, bbno$ stresses how surreal it is to him that he is given such a warm reception on the other side of the world. “I'm gonna be back as soon as possible,” he promised – and it felt like a genuine promise, rather than an empty name-of-town platitude.

With a closing run of breakthrough hit 'lalala' and a DJ medley for the ages – Gunther's Ding Dong Song, the Vengaboys' Boom Boom Boom Boom, Crazy Frog's Axel F and Alice DeeJay's Better Off Alone – you were guaranteed to leave the Factory with a grin plastered across your entire face. It's not a particularly elaborate show, nor a particularly tight one, but it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be fun, and rest assured that's exactly what we got.