Cardi B paid a trip to her old school this week to present a $100,000 check. The rapper made a reportedly unannounced trip to I.S. 232, where she went to middle school herself, in the Bronx in New York City, offering advice to students before announcing her donation.
“Maybe we can have amazing after-school programs — I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. But I will be donating $100,000 to this school,” she said to cheers from the auditorium of teachers and students on Tuesday morning. Speaking to the students, Cardi reminisced about her own experience at the school while emphasizing the importance of education and staying on the right track.
“If you guys don’t make the right decisions, you won’t get accepted to the school that these colleges look at when they make the decisions of which students they’re going to pick,” she said. “And let me tell you something, a lot of these good high schools, they don’t try to pick kids from the Bronx.”
The high school Cardi went to in the Bronx, she noted, did not have the same programs or resources she wanted as an aspiring performer that the schools in Manhattan did. “Before you make that one bad decision — because that little one bad decision could change your life for the rest of your life — make sure you remember where you want to be in a couple of years from now,” she told the students. “When you’re 14, when you’re 15, when you’re 18, and when you’re 21, make sure you think long-term.”
The donation comes just days after the rapper, who endorsed Bernie Sanders for president during the 2020 election, lamented the financial hardship for many across the country. Speaking to fans on Instagram Live over the weekend, she noted that “living is unbearable” for many amid inflation and rising housing costs.
“How are people surviving? I want to know,” she said. “Like, my family and my friends are so grateful to have me. But what about people that don't have a me?"
